Mass Effect: Leaving Earth
by Shadow Chaser
Summary: Spoilers for ME3 - Shepard hated choices and so when presented with the three choices to decide the fate of the galaxy, she chose a fourth option. The consequences of her decision will have a profound effect on the war with the Reapers. -Alt. Universe-
1. Prologue: An End, Once and For All

Mass Effect 3: Leaving Earth

By: Shadow Chaser

**Author's Notes:**

I'm one of the people who was a little disappointed with the choices presented in the final decisions of the ending of _Mass Effect 3_, and so have taken upon myself to do the only thing I can do: write fanfiction. As such, this will take a bit of the endings presented and mix it up a little. Shepard and the galaxy will not go quietly into the night – they will fight with every fiber of their being and choose their fate. As such here is the scenario presented…

**Notes on Shepard:**

Paragon Vanguard (with bits of Renegade), zero casualties from the Suicide Mission, Destroyed Collector Base, cured Genophage, and left Rachni to die, faithful to Kaidan Alenko through all three games.

**Story:**

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><p><em>Prologue – An End, Once and For All<em>

It was as if a million needles stabbed into each and every single one of her nerve endings as she stood there, staring at the ghostly avatar of dark energy that was the Creator of the Reapers. She unconsciously pulled her left hand closer to her stomach and bent over a little, trying to ease the pain. Her right hand gripped the pistol tightly, the only thing that was keeping her from collapsing to the ground as her world swayed around her.

"Will you not choose?" the boy suddenly spoke up and Shepard blinked, not realizing that she had been staring dumbly at the boy for the past few minutes. The distant thumps of explosions raging across Earth and in space made her look sluggishly up past the boy, past the arms of the Citadel to see the fierce battle still being waged.

She could imagine, no, she _heard_ the electronic buzzing roar of the Reapers as they screamed their rage and hunger against the coalition she had worked so hard to build in the past few months. Shepard closed her eyes, suddenly feeling so tired, so weak.

"I…have no right to choose," she finally whispered in answer to the avatar's question.

"But you are the first to reach here, the one who has the will-"

"Stop," she shook her head a little, feeling sharp shooting pain along her neck as her burns and wounds chafed against the smoldering remains of her once pristine armor. Hell, she figured the armor was the only thing keeping her from bleeding out. She could feel something wrong inside her – that last blast from Harbinger before she had managed to crawl her way into the transportation beam had nearly killed her. "Please…just stop."

Silence greeted her request and she opened her eyes again to see the dark energy avatar staring plainly up at her, as if still expecting an answer, a choice.

Shepard sighed softly again, coughing a little before wincing as she felt something tear inside her. She was dying, she could feel it. And this thing…wanted her to choose? Choose the fate of the galaxy, of the whole universe, she supposed. There was more than the Milky Way Galaxy and she had no doubt that the Reapers also harvested other life on the galaxies far away in distant parts of the universe that they could only dream of. So if she had to choose the fate of the galaxy, well, that was one nasty choice.

Each one presented had both merits and denunciations. By becoming one of the Reapers and thus controlling them, she could forever stop this cycle; go back to dark space and sleep. She could even prevent the Reapers from ever harming this galaxy or the others by slowly killing them through starvation or whatever they did to reproduce. She could force them to fire upon each other and kill themselves and she would die too in that ensuing battle. But it would be outside of the galaxy, it would be contained.

But by destroying the Reapers, she could ultimately end the threat that had been plaguing every "cycle" of life; end it once and for all. But all synthetic life would be gone too, the mass relays would be destroyed and faster than light travel would be limited as only the most powerful ships, dreadnoughts and cruisers would have the capabilities. Even then, the nav points would be completely useless by then, having relied on the relays for precision so that one did not end up in a near by sun or star. Plus, there was EDI to consider, and even Legion's sacrifice for the Geth. And herself, if she really wanted to consider that. The avatar had warned that she was more synthetic than organic and thus would perish.

The third option was a merger of the two beings, a hybrid of organics and synthetics. Again, she would lose her life, using her own DNA and implants to create a fusion that was akin to Legion uploading himself to the Geth Collective. Even though she and Kaidan had patched up their relationship and committed to each other, she knew deep down that he would never want such a life for himself, that he could not bear to live as some sort of freakish hybrid. Neither would Garrus or even Wrex after what they had seen with Saren. The only one she suspected would not quite mind, but even then have her reservations was either EDI or Tali though she suspected Tali would feel differently. She could not subject her closest friends to that life, not without their consent.

And that was ultimately the main problem.

The avatar said that she could choose, but Shepard knew she could not. She could not play God over the galaxy, could not choose the fate of so many. She had fought to defy fate, to defy expectations her whole life. She had fought to save as many people as possible, ever since she had lost her family on Mindoir and her unit on Akuze. She could not throw all of that hope, all of that effort away because some ancient intelligence deemed her most worthy of deciding the fate of the galaxy.

_But you did choose, you chose to save Grunt and his Aralakh unit and sacrifice the Rachni Queen_, a nasty little voice spoke in her head and Shepard pressed her lips tightly together. _You held that power in your hands. And you also chose to save the Krogan by curing the Genophage. You chose the fate of a race, surely the fate of a whole galaxy of people is no different?_

"It's not my choice," she hissed out tightly between her teeth as she stared from left to right at the three diverging paths.

"You _must_ choose," the avatar suddenly spoke up and Shepard stared at him, anger filling her. She realized that he had whispered those words in her mind, and glared at him.

"Stay out of my head," she hissed quietly, her left finger twitching a little as it pressed against her stomach, her knee jerk reaction to using a mnemonic movement of her biotics. However, she was able to restrain herself from lashing out as she felt a spike of pain in her already dying body. She had been unable to user her biotics, her broken and battered body having barely enough energy to keep her from collapsing to the ground.

"Your friends will be saved if you choose," the avatar-boy gestured casually towards the space battle raging around them, the hums of the various fighters and ships passing by with guns blazing followed by the electronic buzz-roar of the Reapers. The hint was not lost on Shepard as she realized what the avatar was saying: Choose now and many of them will be spared on all fronts of the war, not just Earth itself. Linger with your choice and many more will die before this war is brought to an end.

"If you do not choose, the cycle will begin over again," the dark energy pulsed a little.

"But didn't you say that I was the first to make it up here?"

"Yes," the boy smiled a little, "and for that, you have your choices."

Shepard shook her head, "I won't choose."

"Then your civilization will perish," the boy did not seemed disturbed by it, and in fact looked a little disappointed. "You were the first-"

"There's another way," she suddenly smiled, the first time in a long time, a genuine smile. She realized what her ultimate fate was and what needed to be done. When Major Kirrahe had told her that the STG would support her against the Dalatrass' wishes, she had received a roster of all STG members and a very familiar name had stood out to her. She was not too surprised that he was a member of STG, but then again Chorban was always interested in ancient technologies and races that were virtually unknown.

In one of her preparations to help the Citadel weather the Reaper invasion, she had contacted him in secret to see if the Keepers could somehow be communicated with and given orders and had used whatever leftover research was on Ilos to help Chorban with his assignment. She had also asked Liara and Javik for their help in regards to Prothean science, though Javik was not that helpful in that regard.

She had only hoped that when the Reapers brought the Citadel to Earth, many of the civilians and refugees had left though she suspected that was not the case in her crawl of the sewage system towards the central core.

"There cannot be-" the swirling dark energy seemingly shook its head.

"There is," Shepard removed her left hand from her stomach and slowly straightened, switching her pistol to her left hand and activated her omni tool. "Admiral Hackett, how many life signs are you reading on the Citadel?"

"Just yours Shepard, but I thought Anderson-"

"Sir, I request that you disengage from Reaper forces near the Citadel," her lips twitched up in a sad smile as she continued staring at the avatar of the boy whose expression looked like it could have been carved from glass.

"Shepard, what are you-"

"The Crucible was a trap, sir. A cleverly designed trap by the Creator of the Reapers to destroy civilization as we know it," Shepard continued before look at the avatar, "I will not choose from your choices, I will choose from my free will. Shepard out."

She cut the connection off before Hackett could say anything else, knowing that the Admiral was either furious at her, or would heed her warning and move the fleets out of the blast radius of the Citadel. She hoped it was the latter instead of the former. There only need be one more death in this war and she was not going to sacrifice anyone else. She tapped her omni tool again, this time inputting the remote commands for the Keepers that she knew had helped probably process and harvest the bodies in the tubes that she had walked in.

Chorban had given her these codes in case she needed to forward them to Captain Bailey or anyone else in C-Sec. As she finished her request and closed her omni tool, the orange glow fading away from her hand, she looked at the avatar-boy.

"You choose destruction of the weapon that your civilizations have spent months building?" the boy asked as a deep rumbling hum started to fill shake the area. A few seconds later the blaring of an alarm resounded beneath her, where the heart of the Citadel was before she had been taken up on the platform.

"Each one of your choices presents me with a logic that I can't quite wrap my brain around," Shepard heard her omni tool beep and brought it up again to see a countdown timer as the rumbles started to shake. She could barely stand, but managed to keep her feet steady. "Each one will stop the Reapers which only begs the question, how. How would it stop the Reapers? Then it occurred to me that it has to be a command function, a code of sorts. Either a code to destroy the mass relays and destroy the Reapers, a code to control them, or a code to merge all synthetic life. You could claim that it's eezo or something, but what it comes down to is that the Citadel is a machine construct.

"The Crucible is a machine construct. There is nothing organic about the two. They both function with command and command lines from organics into a highly computerized system; synthetic and able to be broken, either wirelessly or otherwise. Legion proved that when he changed his people. So since you claim to be the remnant Creator of the Reapers and only appeared here, at the end when the Crucible was joined with you tells me that you are a synthetic. Because if you were an organic, then you could not have survived having two halves of your life separated. When one half was residing in the Citadel, the other in the Crucible, it meant that each civilization that tried and failed to build the Crucible failed and was subsequently destroyed; which means that you are able to stop the Reapers with a code of sorts – you are connected to them."

The rumbles grew and Shepard swayed from the massive vibrations. However, she still managed to keep on her feet and instead pinned the avatar with a glare, "If I destroy the Citadel, the heart of your code, it means that it will stop the Reapers. We'll have to probably kill them one by one, but we can kill them knowing that they can't haunt us afterwards, that they are not coming back."

"And what if you are wrong? The choices are the only way to save your galaxy-"

"I'm not wrong," Shepard shook her head, "Either the Reapers will end up short circuiting because you, the Citadel and maybe the Crucible, are not here to direct them, to guide them, or they can never, and will never use the Citadel again. There will be no more cycles of destruction after this one."

"There is always the mass relays-"

"And it will be easy for us to lock them, for future generations to lock them and never open them. Because you said the Crucible can destroy all mass relays. That means, destroy the Crucible will also stop a command code to access a mass relay by the Reapers in future generations."

"But synthesis between organics and synthetics-"

"It's something I will never force upon anyone. Not after what Cerberus did to me. For all I know, I still could be a VI who thinks she's Commander Shepard," Shepard had to hold back her tears as she echoed her words back to Kaidan while they had been hunting down the Illusive Man at his base.

"You could control the Reapers-"

"I could do that; I could destroy them in dark space. But I will never become one of them. I do not want that power, that Godhood," she glanced at her omni tool, five…four…three… _Kaidan, I'm so sorry. I love you… _"I'm Commander Rinaran Shepard, Systems Allian-"

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><p><strong>Author's Notes:<strong>

Yeah, was not happy with the choices presented in the endgame. I get it, I really do and part of me admires that type of ending where Shepard dies (well, there is a chance of Shepard not dying in one of the endings), but for a game like this, it pretty much kind of irked me that for all of the good that I have done, what was all of it for when everything was either destroyed, set back a few hundred years, or hybrids?


	2. Chapter 1: Those Left Behind

Mass Effect 3: Leaving Earth

By: Shadow Chaser

**Disclaimer:**

Mass Effect does not belong to me; it belongs to Bioware, EA, Casey Hudson, and its writers. Commander Shepard, however, sort of belongs to me – after all, I created her and personalized her (at least I wish I can claim to own her, it's all Bioware's writing so I sort of claim her).

**Story:**

* * *

><p><em>Chapter 1 – Those Left Behind<em>

Major Kaidan Alenko grimaced as the medic finished dressing the last of the burn wounds he had received while making the mad dash towards the transportation beam that was connected to the Citadel. He could still hear the distant buzzing-roar of Harbinger and his Reaper forces stomping around what was left of London, still guarding the transport beam. The howl of husks and cannibals echoed off of the concrete walls as he gingerly sat up and glanced up at the medic.

"Give me something for the pain and some adrenaline if you have it," he reached over and grabbed his assault rifle, a heavily modified Phaeston that the requisitions officer at C-Sec had given him access to when he became a Spectre.

"Sir-"

"Now, soldier," Kaidan barked, closing his eyes briefly in annoyance. He needed to get back onto the battlefield, to make sure that the line was held, that another push could be had – but most of all he needed to check the area that Harbinger was now occupying because he had not seen anyone bring in Shepard's body. That meant Shepard had either made it to the Citadel, or she had been instantly vaporized by Harbinger. He bit his lip, trying to force the pain away; he had to believe that she was on the Citadel, had made it there.

He had known that there was a chance of either one of them dying in this battle, but Kaidan did not want to think about that – think about losing Shepard again. He couldn't go through that, not after seeing the _Normandy SR-1_ blown to pieces three years ago. She made it, he reassured himself as he gave a cursory glance to his rifle to make sure it was still working.

It was through the saving grace of Liara's timely barrier that they had managed to survive Harbinger's furious onslaught and even then, some of the _Normandy's_ crew that had gone down to fight were seriously injured. Javik and Lieutenant Vega had taken the brunt of a blast that had nearly torn through Tali and the three of them were in cots near him, tended to by medics. Liara herself was exhausted, but unharmed and had immediately set out once more to shore up her fellow asari commandos' barriers through the immediate area.

Amongst their group that had charged with Shepard was Garrus and Kaidan opened his eyes to see the fellow turian gingerly stand up, grabbing his trusty Widow sniper rifle and head out. He felt two small jabs of needles stabbing into his leg and opened his eyes. The medic looked resigned to having to resort to such methods, but he suspected that he too was itching to fight for Earth and at this point, if one was not dead, one just needed a gun and a target.

"Garrus," Kaidan was not surprised that his voice cracked as he stood, "wait up…"

"I'm going back out there Major, don't-"

"I'm not stopping you Vakarian," Kaidan limped towards the turian who had stopped and waited for him, "just…you're going to need someone watching your back."

"Heh," the turian barked a quiet laugh, "well then, keep them off of me while I pop a few heads?"

Kaidan snorted, "That's the idea…"

When they had landed and made the initial push towards the first Hades Cannon it had been a tough uphill battle. He had helped with crowd control while Garrus and Shepard had picked them off with their Widows. Occasionally when one or two had managed to get through his suppressing firepower, both biotically and with his assault rifle, Shepard had casually pulled them into the air where she and Garrus had then wrecked havoc.

However, when they had to push towards the missile batteries and the sheer number of brutes and banshees that charged at them, Kaidan was treated to a rare sight of Shepard using her fully evolved ability that he did not know that human biotics could possible use. He had seen it once or twice, but seeing her tackle the six brutes and three banshees that had tried to ambush them was a shock to him. She had literally turned herself into a mini mass effect relay and _charged_ at them, knocking them back before following up her attacks with a powerful ground-zero shockwave that ripped through each of them like they were nothing.

It was nothing short of a spectacular biotic display of her abilities and a testament to her Vanguard designation on her N7 armor that she truly could have been a one-woman army. He knew from experience, creating any type of biotic field like what she had unleashed upon the brutes and banshees must have taken a huge toll on her, but she kept pressing on and it had also urged him to throw caution to the wind and give it all he had with his own biotics.

Then came the push towards the beam before Harbinger could land, their desperate run. They had all known that if one of them, just one, reached the Citadel, then the arms could be opened to let the Crucible in. Only one of them had to reach it and Kaidan had wondered if Shepard was the one to do it – after all, she had literally thrown herself across the street with her _charging_ ability. But she had ran, like the rest of them, and he knew that she had exhausted her reserves just to keep the banshees and brutes off of them as they waited for Anderson's reinforcements.

He too was exhausted, pushed beyond the limits of his own biotic capabilities and the energy bars he carried on him for battlefield emergencies had already been consumed. But they could not falter, not when there were so many others counting on them. Not with his parents, whom he did not know were still alive or not, part of his biotics team holed up in Chicago, everyone. Other worlds like Palaven, Thessia, they were waiting for the victory from Earth before the coalition that Shepard had built would move to those words, to kick the Reapers from the galaxy once and for all.

"How is she?" Kaidan noticed that Garrus was waiting patiently for him to feel the meds running through his system, boosting his energy level and pushing away the pain before they headed out of the makeshift medical triage. The two of them made a sore sight, limping old soldiers who were still determined to fight.

"There's a rupture in her suit and the docs say she was running a high fever, but they're currently treating her with antibiotics so…" Garrus shrugged as best as he could, his mandibles twitching in obvious pain of his own wounds.

Kaidan nodded; after all of the time he had spent on the _Normandy_, he was getting good at reading turian expressions through their mandibles. He wasn't as good as Shepard who seemingly had a gift of figuring out people easily, but he was getting there. Plus, he supposed Garrus was one of the more expressive turians, unlike Primarch Victus and the turian councilor Sparatus. The only reason he asked Garrus about Tali was because Shepard had confessed to him that she had nearly ran into the two while they were "getting to know each other" and had immediately turned around to leave them alone. He had laughed at her obvious embarrassment and teased her about it, but she had also expressed that she was happy for both Tali and Garrus.

Kaidan knew that Shepard held a great amount of pride and affection towards the turian who was like a protégé to her. He wasn't jealous of that affection, after all, he had the same pride towards his own students, but he could see that she had been worried about Garrus more than the rest of her friends aboard the _Normandy_.

It was the same affection held for Joker and what caused her to tell him that she was determined to make sure Joker and EDI were happy. He had readily agreed, but didn't tell her that he still was a little unnerved by EDI's new body, after all, it had tried to kill him on Mars. Still, he did not dissuade her because he saw the terrible burden of the war and of the coalition in her eyes, posture, and her words. She needed some kind of hope beyond what he could provide her and if it was towards making Garrus, Joker, EDI, and everyone else happy then so be it.

"We should probably head…uh, that way," Garrus gestured vaguely towards where the hulking form of Harbinger stood near the transport beam, still blasting away at random people and rubble. Kaidan grimaced as he heard the screams of the dying as they slowly picked their way through the rubble and dead bodies.

"Yeah," he agreed. The only reason why they were willing to get close to Harbinger was only for one thing in common – to find Shepard. He wanted to believe that she had made it to the Citadel, but he also wanted to reassure himself that she had not been vaporized by Harbinger; though he suspected if she had, then there wouldn't even be a single piece left of her.

They had only taken a few steps when the first screams of human husks alerted him to incoming enemies. He took a deep breath and let it out before hefting his rifle and sighted down the scope. As the first blue-glowing head charged from a mound of rubble Kaidan fired, shredding it before flaring his biotics to throw a couple of the husks back into the rubble. The loud report of Garrus' Widow echoed next to his ear, nearly deafening him, but Kaidan was used to the sound by now. He continued scattering fire this way and that as more husks appeared out of the rubble, ducking behind a pillar as the occasional ravager fired its cannons at the two of them.

The roar of a harvester made him duck a little as it flew over their heads. He tracked it as it flapped its mutated wings and looked to land to deposit more troops to harass them when two bright fiery red balls of explosive power slammed into the creature. It shrieked as its wings burnt to a crisp before falling heavily to the ground, dead. Kaidan looked towards the source of the carnage rounds and saw the young krogan Grunt and Lieutenant Vega headed towards them. Both of them looked like they were walking wounded and liberally covered in gore, blood, and chunks of metallic entrails. The krogan nodded at them before turning and walking towards where another group of krogan were entrenched near them. His raucous laughter filled the air as he blasted two more husks at point blank range with his Claymore shotgun.

"Tali!" Garrus could not keep the shock out of his voice and Kaidan saw the young Quarian walking slowly towards them a little behind Vega, her hands holding her shotgun, but otherwise looking a bit unsteady.

He heard a slight scramble of rock moving under feet before more screams of husks filled the air and Kaidan readjusted his rifle, his attention back to the battlefield. He took a glance back to see Garrus about to move from his position, no doubt to help Tali, but she spotted them and shook her head just as EDI's humanoid form appeared at her side, steadying her with a grip on her arm.

"You look like shit Major," Vega grinned at him as he propped himself up next to what used to be a wall and Kaidan shook his head.

"That your professional opinion Lieutenant?" he liked Vega, a good kid if a little quirky sometimes. Also always played a mean hand of poker whenever they decided to get a game in with some of the other crew.

"Yeah, though I probably don't look that hot either," Vega wiped some grime off of his forehead, but only managed to make it look more streaky than usual. "Sure as hell don't feel that hot either."

It would have been easy to order Vega back to the medical triage, considering that the hulk of a man looked quite grey and pale even in the harsh light of the battlefield, but Kaidan knew that Vega would sooner deck him than follow that order; insubordination be damned.

"Major Coates ordered us to hold here and not push forward to the transport beam-"

"But Shepard-"

"EDI's patched through to the fleet and says that she managed to flag radio chatter that Shepard and Admiral Anderson made it through," Vega shifted his assault rifle and sprayed a few bullets towards the more enterprising husks that mindlessly charged their way.

Kaidan peered out and fired a cryo blast at two cannibals who were about to consume the dead husks, freezing them in place. They shattered moments later by two reports of Garrus' sniper rifle. He looked up at the darkened sky, trying to see through the smoke and the debris of the Citadel's arms opening. "How did EDI…?" he yelled to Vega as more screams filled the air. He wasn't too concerned as they sounded more like husks than the dreaded screech of the banshees. If one of those arrived on the battlefield… Kaidan shook his head; he had to focus as he could feel both the pain medication and adrenaline wearing slowly off.

"The girl could work wonders," Vega called back as they bolstered themselves in their positions and occasionally fired out into the crowd. Harbinger had not moved from its position near the transport beam and seemed determined to fire at positions closer than they were, driving out troops who fell back or were instantly killed.

"My link is weak at best, but Joker has kept the _Normandy_ nearby," EDI replied as she crouched down a little above their position, her pistol out. Beyond her was Tali and Garrus, the Quarian facing opposite of the turian to cover his six with her shotgun, "I am functional for now."

Like the missiles trying to take out the Reaper destroyer, the radio was useless once they had entered near the transport beam's range. It was only through hand signals and relaying messages that those who were able to push into the area were able to fortify their positions around the transport beam. Kaidan knew that they could easily fall back to the more defensible position, but they had to be sure, had to cover the only possible exit that was available to anyone who made it to the Citadel. A thought occurred to him.

"EDI, are you able to scan the immediate area around the transport beam?"

"Not well, Major, but I can try," the A.I. replied.

"Scan for any husks and tell me if they're headed into the transport beam-"

"Standby Major," the A.I.'s expression furrowed into one of human-like concern, "Admiral Hackett has ordered an immediate retreat of the forces surrounding the Crucible and the Citadel-"

"So she did open it!" Vega crowed, "booyah Lola!"

"Jeff, I do not think-" even though she was a synthetic android, Kaidan saw her eyes unfocus as she seemed to ignore the rest of them and was concentrating on talking with the _Normandy_ itself, "Jeff, do not-"

"EDI, what's going on?" Kaidan refused to let the fear that had suddenly gripped him for Shepard's safety color his question. He needed to believe, needed to hope that Shepard would come out of this alive, that this wasn't the permanent goodbye that he had tried to say to her before they had started the push.

"Jeff, there are too many Reaper forces around there…yes, I know, I know you promised her, but Jeff…do not-"

Kaidan knew he would probably never really get used to seeing human expressions on EDI's face, and a part of him wondered if she knew she was reacting to her own words, but could see the slight alarm and despair that creased around her eyes.

"Jeff!" EDI suddenly cried out, her face a mask of terror.

"EDI-" he did not get a chance to finish his question as Harbinger abruptly _roared_, the buzzing sound filling the air like a swarm of giant bees. Kaidan gritted his teeth and clamped a hand to one of his ears in an attempt to ward away the sound, even though he knew it was futile. He could feel his implant buzzing in his head, rattling near his skull, could feel the buzzing-roar travel through his bones and down into his feet before the noise grew louder and louder.

"Make it stop!" he squinted his eyes open to see Vega jamming his head against the rubble wall, his other hand pressed against his ear. A cursory glance at the others showed that even the husks themselves had been affected by whatever Harbinger was doing, frozen in the middle of their attacks. "Ack!"

Kaidan opened his mouth to try to say something, anything, but all that he felt was the buzzing-roar of Harbinger, an angry roar. He could see EDI's mouth moving before she suddenly collapsed, her glowing visor powering down and knew that whatever had connected her to the _Normandy_ had been severed. Beyond her Tali was curled up against the ground, her face mask flashing but he could not hear whatever she was saying. Garrus was trying to reach over to her, but even he was affected by the sound as one of his legs twitched and his mandibles flared in rapid succession.

He shook his head as he looked to see others on the battlefield in similar situations, some of them staggered, guns dropped to the ground as they tried to block out the sound with their hands against their ears. A few of the asari commandos flared blue, before their biotics began to warp various things, walls, enemies, even occasionally throwing a random soldier haplessly elsewhere. Kaidan gritted his teeth as he felt the buzzing grow, if it were possible, could feel his implant shake and rattle in his head. He could feel a pressure growing, right where his implant was, the static build-up of biotics that he could not control.

Kaidan let go of his assault rifle and lashed out with his right hand towards where he had last seen the husks, hoping that whatever he did would release the pressure. He saw something warp beyond him, and the pressure suddenly lessened, only for him to feel it building up again. He channeled his biotics once more as Harbinger continued to roar, the buzzing sound growing, the pressure rapidly filling his head. It was too much, at this rate, he knew he would either die from the unnatural buildup or would fry the implant in his head, thus killing himself.

A high-pitched scream nearby that pierced above the furious buzzing-roar got Kaidan's attention as he squinted through the pain and the ever growing pressure to see one of the commandos collapse to the ground, writhing. Her body flared blue as she twitched and shook before she suddenly stilled, blood dripping from her nose and the corner of her mouth. He could only stare in shock before several more high-pitched screams cut through the air.

Kaidan quickly lashed out with his own biotics, clearing the pressure a little as a spike of fear filled him. He did not want to die, not like that, not from a brain hemorrhage. But just as he relieved the pressure, he could feel it build once more, this time a little faster. His vision started to blur and he blinked his eyes rapidly, he had to focus, had to make sure that he was not accidentally warping or tossing a fellow ally or even Vega who was next to him.

He tried to brace himself against the pile of rubble he had entrenched himself in, but slipped, falling to the ground. Kaidan reached out and threw a couple of the large rocks high into the air before trying to get up, only to fall back down as he felt the pressure return, this time even faster. He could feel it behind his eyes, pressing down upon him, could feel the never ending buzzing-roar traveling deep into his bones. It was as if someone was trying to squeeze his brain into his spine and he gasped, lashing out again, this time, blindly. He could feel the pain of his burns stretching across his skin, could feel something tear as he reached out to try to stop the pain and the incredible pressure building up in him-

Only to suddenly find himself staring up at the darkened sky, the buzzing-roar abruptly gone, the pressure that was forcing his brain down his spine gone. It took him a moment to realize he was lying flat on his back. He heard and felt his lungs heave a harsh breath and blinked. What had happened? Did he…die?

"-lenko! Major Alenko! Kaidan!" he started a little at the sound of his name and saw Vega peering down at him as he blinked several more times and sat up, immediately regretting his action as he felt a wave of dizziness. He closed his eyes in an effort to stem the sudden bout of nausea before opening them again.

"You all right?" Vega's arm landed on his shoulder, steadying him as he nodded.

"I think so…what happened?" his throat felt so dry and it hurt to swallow. Kaidan wondered if he had screamed somewhere in between when he was trying to stop his brain from turning into mush.

"Harbinger left," Vega said and he snapped open his eyes.

"What?"

"That son of a bitch left," the marine gestured towards where the transportation beam still glowed, but there was no sign of Harbinger.

In fact, as Kaidan looked around some more, there were a hell of a lot less Reapers around. There were a few Destroyer-class ones around, but they seemingly staggered around, looking for all intents and purposes, lost. Two fell in the distance as missiles struck home and Kaidan rubbed his hand over his face. Was he dreaming?

"Believe me, I had Liara kick me, well, after she recovered, no you're not dreaming," Vega replied to the question that he had not realized he asked. "You okay Major?"

"Y-Yeah…" Kaidan took the offered hand and pulled himself up, swaying a little before righting himself and peered out at the still glowing beam, "Harbinger…left?"

"Yeah, weirdest thing though, while he had been trying to fry every single biotic's brain in the area, he looked lost, if a Reaper could look lost. I mean, he, it was hovering in the air before suddenly taking off back into space. A bunch of the Reapers near him also took off after him, leaving those little dudes there. I dunno what Shepard did, or what happened but-"

"Any word from Shepard?" he glanced over and saw that EDI's body was still splayed out, the connection still severed.

"No man, no one's seen anything out of that transport beam since Harbinger took off. A few reported that there was a huge bright light in the sky, but that could be anything. Major Coates signaled that he's going to try to hail Hackett on the comm. but he needs to get away from the beam's distruptive radius so that's going to take at least fifteen minutes."

"The husks?" it had only taken Kaidan a moment to realize that something else was off. The howls of husks was not present and instead the distant sounds of bullets being fired or explosions from missiles impacting their targets filled the air. Otherwise, the ambient sounds of those around them filled the air.

"See for yourself," Vega gestured for him to look at what they had been fighting and he turned to see the various husks standing aimlessly around. They were not even aware of anything around them nor a few soldiers who dared get closer to them and poke them with their guns. He saw one soldier shoot a husk in the head, killing it, but there was not even a single retaliation from the others.

"Holy…" Kaidan swallowed hard, "what the…fuck?"

"Exactly my thoughts," Vega echoed.

"We…won?"

"If Harbinger just upped and left, taking most of his Reaper buddies along with him, then hell yeah, I call it a victory."

"Huh," Kaidan wanted to laugh, but as he glanced at the transport beam, the urge died. A part of him worried where Harbinger left _to_; certainly the Reaper had been hell bent on destroying human civilization all because of Shepard. He had a feeling that there was no way Harbinger had retreated back into dark space all because of something that happened with the Citadel and the Crucible.

He opened his mouth to tell Vega that, but before he could get the words out, a Mako suddenly rumbled towards them and stopped. The driver abruptly got out and hurried towards them, a little breathless. "Sir, Sergeant Armstrong," the young man saluted him and Kaidan returned the salute, "I was told that one of you may know the location of a Ms. Miranda Lawson."

"Miranda, what do you want with her?" Garrus spoke up behind Kaidan and he turned to see the turian approach them, "the last we saw, she was a few blocks away with Jack dealing with a few banshees that were harassing Jack's students."

"Thank you, I will search in that area-"

"What the hell is going on?" Kaidan stepped forward, putting as much authority as he could. The myth that biotics could read minds was just that, a myth, but Kaidan had always been really good at reading humans. It was aliens that he couldn't quite get a good read on – those were more Shepard's forte. And he had a feeling that the Sergeant was hiding something in regards to his search for Miranda Lawson.

The young sergeant pursed his lips and shook his head, "I am sorry Major, I have strict orders-"

"Bullshit," Kaidan shook his head, ignoring the sudden bout of nausea that accompanied his movement, "this has something to do with Shepard, right?"

"Sir, I am not-"

"You better answer the man, Sergeant Armstrong," out of the corner of his eye, he saw Vega cross his arms across his chest, looking absolutely intimidating. He glanced back a little to see the others also stepping forward, their expressions ranging from concern to open worry.

The young soldier chewed his lower lip for a few seconds before shaking his head, "I am sorry Major-"

"Please," Kaidan asked quietly, "tell Hackett, tell Anderson, any of them that I'll take your punishment for breaking a direct order. Just…if this is about Shepard and Miranda…"

The sergeant pressed his lips together into a thin line before sighing, "The _Normandy_ radioed in a few minutes ago, touching down near Admiral Anderson's command post. Lieutenant Moreau reported that they had Shepard, but she's clinically dead and need Miranda Lawson…"

Kaidan didn't hear the rest as he felt his whole world collapsing around him again. It was like the _Normandy_ three years ago. He could not lose Shepard again, not after all they had been through.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes:<strong>

Those familiar with my writing style know that I either like to leave it at cliffhangers, or I really don't kill off certain people – namely Shepard. I just like to milk some angst here. ^_^

A little extra clarification about my opinion of the endings. I don't hate them; I'm just disappointed with the lack of choice in them. I mean, I get it, _Mass Effect_ universe is kind of dark and depressing, but the lack of closure, especially your teammates, that just bothers me. _Dragon Age: Origins _at least had text-based closure for every single character and group. I wish at least this had some closure…


	3. Chapter 2: Sole Survivor

Mass Effect 3: Leaving Earth

By: Shadow Chaser

**Disclaimer:**

Mass Effect does not belong to me; it belongs to Bioware, EA, Casey Hudson, and its writers. Commander Shepard, however, sort of belongs to me – after all, I created her and personalized her (at least I wish I can claim to own her, it's all Bioware's writing so I sort of claim her).

**Story:**

* * *

><p><em>Chapter 2 – Sole Survivor<em>

The Mako was very cramped, especially with all of them trying to squeeze into the various seats and space so that they could drive back to the compound. But the discomfort only lasted a few minutes as he pulled into the main gate behind the young sergeant's Mako. It did not surprise Kaidan how fast they had gotten back, considering that it felt like hours when they had fought for each bit of ground earlier in the day to reach the transport beam. The sleek form of the _Normandy_ had already landed in a courtyard beyond the compound, guarded by multiple missile batteries.

Liara, who had unobtrusively joined them when the sergeant had made his request immediately opened the hatch to the Mako and stepped out, followed closely by Tali and Garrus carrying the deactivated body of EDI. Vega, Javik, and the others who had heard the sergeant's words had opted to remain behind but Kaidan knew that they wanted news of Shepard.

The stories would already be flying across the battlefield by now, and morale would be lessened, but there would still be hope. After all, everyone had heard how Shepard had died at the Collectors' hands, but had come back to life. Kaidan did not follow Garrus out and instead, sat at the wheel a minute longer, staring at the other Mako as Miranda Lawson hurried out and in towards the compound. A couple of minutes later, he saw her cross the makeshift bridge that spanned the area and disappear into the other building, obviously headed towards the _Normandy_ itself. Tali and Garrus crossed the bridge a few minutes after she disappeared, Garrus obviously staying near the Quarian who limped along as best as she could.

He suddenly felt ashamed and stared down at the controls of the Mako. Who was he to join them; the two people of Shepard's original crew that had first seen Shepard alive after the _SR-1_ was destroyed. He noticed that his hands were shaking a little as he rested them on the controls, was he afraid?

"You should at least get something to eat, Major," Liara's gentle voice startled Kaidan as he turned to see the asari peering back into the Mako.

A sudden swift irrational anger filled him as he absorbed her words, "Eat?" He gestured towards the window, towards the _Normandy_, "When she's- she's…how the hell can you say something like that?"

Liara frowned and Kaidan felt a vicious sense of pleasure that she had deserved it, that she was still the naïve little asari kid and not some all-powerful Shadow Broker-

"Because you haven't moved from that cockpit since you drove in. Because you're sitting there, scared to death of what you might see, what you might discover. Because _you_ can't handle it. You can't handle whether or not seeing Shepard's body lying dead on a slab in the morgue. Because the fact that she may be clinically dead and _Cerberus_ may be the only one to fix her up again is making you scared. Because you are afraid, deep down, you're afraid that this time Shepard may not come back."

Kaidan was taken aback at the sudden venom in Liara's tone and stared at her dumbly for a few seconds, his mouth opening and closing as he tried to counter her words, but nothing came out. "I…"

"We were lucky," Liara was quiet as she stared a little past him, "all of us, not just you and me. No one else has the chance that we were given. A second chance to say things unsaid, to live lives that we weren't able to live. We all knew the Reapers were coming and we were given the greatest gift to the galaxy that could so easily take her away. We all knew what this war may do to our friends, family and those we love."

When he had rejoined the _Normandy_ after Udina's attempted coup, Liara had pulled him aside and told him that she had been worried about Shepard, about the stress that she was under. EDI had also chimed in and expressed great concern that Shepard was close to cracking and it was only those around her, familiar faces, friends, even former lovers like himself, that was keeping her on her path. She told him about Palaven, about what happened at Tuchanka and how she had taken Mordin's loss stoically, but losing Thane so soon after returning from the planet had crushed her.

He had not seen it when he had been protecting the Council during Cerberus' attack, but Liara had told him that Shepard was very close to not shooting him, unable to lose another friend and confidant in that short of a time. Shepard herself had told him that she would have never been able to shoot him, but there had always been a niggling sense of doubt in Kaidan. He knew how professional she was and how dedicated to both being a Spectre and an N7 operative who got the job done no matter what. But to hear it from Liara herself…

She had then asked him if his intentions were honorable, prompting him to be a little shocked by her accusation until he realized that she saw Shepard like an older sister and was only trying to protect her from any outside source of pain that she could help deflect. She had told him about finding Shepard's body three years ago, reluctantly giving it to Miranda Lawson and Cerberus to revive; afraid that the next time she met Shepard, the woman she knew and came to admire would be only a shadow of the person she had known.

Now, in the time of their direst need, it was their turn to support Shepard, to make sure that she was able to continue on her mission no matter what happened and Liara needed to make sure that he was not going to hurt her. That had prompted some serious thinking on his part before finally asking Shepard to join him for dinner on the Citadel at Apollo's Café.

Kaidan frowned as heard Liara's words now. When they had taken a moment to rest at Anderson's command post, he had confessed to Shepard that there had been things he wanted to say in case none of them made it back. He had told her that he knew this was the end and then said the things he wanted to say. She had accepted them graciously and readily before reassuring him in her own charming way. He had thought he had said the words he wanted to say, '_I love you_,' and all that, but truth be told, there had been one thing he had not asked her.

A small bitter bark of laughter emerged from his lips as he shook his head, ignoring the sudden wave of dizziness from his movement. "I was…" he paused, "I…was going to ask her to marry me. You know…when all of this was over."

To his surprise, Liara's expression softened before she grabbed one of his hands and tugged him up from the seat, "Ask her, ask her now."

"But-"

"I know that Miranda has as much stake in this as any of us. If anyone can bring Shepard back, it's her. Ask Shepard before anything else happens because there needs to be-" Liara abruptly let go of his hand and ducked out of the Mako, but not before Kaidan realized the extent of her true feelings.

He knew that Shepard always saw Liara as a close friend, but realized that he had misinterpreted the familial love on Liara's part. It was true Liara might have seen Shepard like a sister, but the asari's feelings for the Commander was much more than that. Liara loved her, yet did not fight for her affections when she had been rejected. Kaidan remembered the confrontation and slightly awkward situation Shepard had been stuck in when they both had confronted her about their growing affection for the Commander three years ago.

"Liara," he stepped out of the cramped Mako, ignoring his wounds, the painkillers given to him earlier completely wearing off during the short drive to the compound. He saw her standing with her back to him, arms wrapped around herself. "Liara," he called out again and saw her turn, a slight sheen to her eyes from unshed tears, "thank you."

She only smiled a little at him before the two of them headed into the base. Kaidan grabbed a quick protein bar from one of the ration packets lying about, feeling hungrier than ever, but knew that if he wanted to stay by Shepard side as Lawson did her work, then he wouldn't get another chance to have a meal any time soon. Even then the protein bar would only last so long. At least it gave him enough energy so that he wouldn't pass out from lack of energy. His wounds on the other hand…well, he supposed that Dr. Chakwas would have another shot of adrenaline and dose of painkillers to keep it at bay.

As they exited the second building, carefully picking their way down the mound of rubble to where the _Normandy_ had landed, the sense of trepidation returned. Kaidan steadied himself as he entered the landing bay ramp, nodding to a couple of the MPs stationed by the ramp. He noticed scores of blackened and burnt parts of the _Normandy_, some of which hissed and sparked from exposed wires. The hangar was also in bad shape; the little ship that could probably had her work cut out during the space battle.

He and Liara took the elevator up to the crew deck and exited to find more flickering lights and exposed wires. A few body bags were lined up near the hall that led to Liara's office and Kaidan saw the asari's lips thin a little at the sight. However, there seemed to be something missing and it was only until he saw the med bay doors that he realized what had been missing. EDI would have already given them a short summary of what happened and her absence was what made the whole place so eerie. They had seen her body fall during Harbinger's attack and before that had heard her talking to Joker – he now knew that Joker had probably been the one to rescue Shepard which prompted the frantic talk between EDI and the pilot.

"I hope she's alright," Liara's thoughts were on the same line as his as he palmed the door open and stepped in.

"-those readings don't make sense. How could she be clinically dead from that when I'm literally seeing her breathe at the same time?" Dr. Chakwas was saying as she pointed something out on her omnitool to the former ex-Cerberus agent as they hovered around Shepard's body.

He took a step to his left to peer in between them and blinked in surprise. Shepard was utterly motionless on the bed she had been placed on and while he was stunned by how extensive her injuries were and how pale she looked, that was not what shocked him. There was a pale, shimmery…glow for the lack of a better descriptive, around her, not like a bubble, but similar to the stasis fields Liara some times threw up to keep enemies at bay.

"…Goddess…" even Liara sounded confused and bewildered, prompting Lawson to flick a look back at them, her eyes flashing once before turning back to Chakwas.

"Tali took EDI's body back to the AI Core," Garrus whispered quietly as he shuffled next to them before leaning against the foot of a bed, arms cross over his chest. "Seems like the transport beam or whatever explosion the _Normandy_ flew into and back out of garbled some of the transmission. Chakwas says that she called for Miranda to explain these weird readings from Shepard and somewhere in that transmission someone must have thought Shepard was dead and that Miranda was needed to revive her."

"So…Shepard's not dead?" Kaidan asked, suddenly feeling very light-headed as if an elephant got off of his chest, allowing him to breathe again.

"More than likely not," the turian rolled his shoulders, a very human-like gesture, "but like Dr. Chakwas was saying, her readings are saying Shepard's clinically dead, yet even I saw her chest rise and fall like she was still breathing."

"Look-" Liara pointed out.

Kaidan saw that indeed Garrus was right. Shepard's body seemingly took a breath, but there was no other movement.

"Is this Cerberus tech?" he spoke up, bringing both Chakwas and Lawson's gazes upon him.

The ex-Cerberus agent shook her head, "I know every single implant and tech that we put into Shepard when we rebuilt her, this isn't one of them." She seemed to realize how callous her words are before she shook her head again, "Sorry…what I mean is that it isn't her biotics either."

"The two crew members that managed to carry her from the airlock down here are over there," Chakwas pointed to two of the beds near the far end of the med bay. Kaidan saw that both crew members were curled up, seemingly asleep, their backs turned towards them. They looked at peace and he had not noticed that they were there before. "We had to sedate them."

"Sedate them?" Liara asked.

"After they got Shepard in here, well…" Chakwas looked a little pale, "they started screaming about voices in their heads."

Garrus immediately uncrossed his arms and stood up straighter, "That's indicative of Reaper tech., indoctrination even."

"Exactly what I thought," Chakwas nodded before glancing at Lawson, "which is why I asked for Miranda as soon as I had Joker land here. We know that Cerberus has been messing with Reaper tech for a while now. EDI's part Reaper tech and even the Illusive Man himself is part Reaper tech. I wanted to know if Cerberus used Reaper tech on Shepard."

Kaidan felt himself still at the implications and looked from Shepard to the ex-Cerberus woman who had been responsible for her resurrection. He had never trusted Miranda Lawson, not even after Shepard said that she was trustworthy. He knew that Lawson had been one of the Illusive Man's most loyal agents and was most likely a predecessor to Kai Leng had Leng not been rebuilt with extensive cybernetics.

"That…could take a little digging," Lawson looked a little uneasy, "and I don't have access to some of the original files. I did try to take as much as possible but-"

"Didn't EDI pull a lot of files on the Lazarus Project while we were at the Illusive Man's main base?" Garrus asked, one of his mandibles flaring thoughtfully, or at least Kaidan figured it was a thoughtful one. The turian was getting better at using both human mannerisms and he was getting better at reading turian ones. When they had attacked the main base, Garrus had been assigned to lead a second team to ambush the Illusive Man in case he was focused on EDI and Shepard. Kaidan had been assigned to Shepard's team and while he had been a little surprised that she had picked Garrus to lead the second one, he was not too bothered by it.

"There were a few video logs we saw, but I don't know if EDI pulled the others," Kaidan remembered reassuring Shepard after her moment of self-doubt. He had always known her to be a strong woman and that moment where she questioned whether or not she was a sophisticated VI who thought she was Commander Shepard made him all the more protective of her. She was real, she was not some programmed VI and he was as sure of that as the day he had fallen in love with her.

"If you want to talk to EDI, it'll probably have to be either in the cockpit or the AI core," they all turned to see Joker hobbling into the medical bay, nodding to them before pausing for a moment to glance at Shepard with a shake of his head before hobbling over to the door to the AI core. But before he could palm it open, it opened of its own accord and Tali limped out.

"She says it's going to take some time for her to repair some of the broken coding and upload herself to the body once more, but she's doing fine. I uploaded some patches that Legion had given me to help her expedite the repairs and smooth out her run processes. She also told me to tell you that you were an idiot to pull a stunt like that and Shepard would have never wanted you to do that."

"Yeah, well, she's not Shepard," Joker frowned before moving into the AI core, the door shutting behind him.

"What in the name of the spirits happened?" Garrus jumped in before Kaidan could ask the same question.

"From what EDI told me," Tali pulled herself onto a bed and immediately nodded gratefully to Chakwas who moved to her side and stabbed a needle into her suit. Kaidan suspected that it was probably a painkiller considering that she looked a little more relieved instead of hunched over from her wounds. "Admiral Hackett abruptly ordered the turian Seventh Fleet guarding the Crucible even after it docked with the Citadel to move away. Moments later, the Citadel self-destructed, taking the Crucible along with it."

"Shepard's doing?"

"EDI says that there was a biometric spike on the sensors in the heart of the explosion that registered as Shepard's. The Normandy was able to pick it up since she had been dogfighting a few Reaper fighters near the area and Joker rushed in towards the explosion. EDI had to forcibly disconnect herself from her body down on Earth to help Joker and well, that left her with a bit of coding damage."

"It certainly explains why the whole ship was shaking badly and why alarms were blaring on all levels. There were a few hull breaches too," Chakwas shook her head, "Joker is never this reckless…but…I can see why."

Kaidan understood why. Everyone in the room, with the possible exception of Lawson, understood why Joker went after Shepard like that. The man would never admit it to any of them, but it was plain that the pilot felt like he owed Shepard his life after being in defiance of her orders to evacuate the ship when the Collectors attacked. There was guilt there and it was because Shepard had forcibly threw him into the escape pod at the cost of her own life.

"So what about her?" Garrus directed the conversation back to their unconscious, maybe even dead Commander.

"I can…talk to Admiral Hackett to find the chief scientist on the Crucible project. I don't know if they had been brought during our assault on Earth, but maybe what's happening to Shepard is related to the Crucible?" Liara sounded a little hesitant, but otherwise gave no other indication that she was disturbed by the fact of potential Reaper technology in and around Shepard.

"That's probably the best course of action. I'll find Jacob and talk to Dr. Archer and Dr. Cole. Cole was an early part of the Lazarus Project before being reassigned to study leftover Collector tech. And Dr. Archer, well, let's just say that some of what he did for Project Overlord was based on some of Shepard's cybernetics. They may know something of what's happening to her," Lawson chimed in.

"Please, anything that could help me at least figure out how much damage has been done to the Commander would be helpful," Chakwas nodded grimly before the two women left the medical bay, both headed towards the elevator.

"I should probably join them; let the others know that Shepard's at least alive. Worst rumors have spread on battlefields after something like this. Don't really want morale to take that much of a blow," Garrus mumbled the last part before hurrying out followed by Tali.

It only took less than a second for Kaidan to realize he was the only one left in the room and he had not moved an inch since he arrived in the med bay. The doctor also seemed to realize that as her omnitool lit up while she ran it back and forth over Shepard's body before turning to face him.

"Major-"

"I'm not moving," he crossed his arms across his chest and leaned a little heavier than he liked against the bed that Garrus had been propping himself up earlier. He felt tired, his head heavy all of the sudden, but he didn't want to move. The battle was done and over, there was no immediate threat in the area he had been fighting in; no need to push towards the transport beam anymore. Shepard was aboard the _Normandy_, relatively safe and sound considering that she seemed alive, but they could not confirm that.

Chakwas shook her head, "Stubborn. Every single one of you."

He snorted lightly, "Comes with being a marine I suppose."

"No," she smiled a little at him, "comes with being in love."

"Ah," he coughed lightly, "well-"

"Major, you're borderline hypoglycemic," she ran her omnitool up and down him, a small frown on her face, "mildly concussed, and your bloodwork is currently all over the place. Your eezo nodes are also giving some odd readings-"

"I think Harbinger tried to fry my brain," now that she had mentioned it, Kaidan did feel a little out of sorts, like he had ran twenty marathons or overextended himself with his biotics. It happened rarely since he his days at BAaT training, he was so careful, but he supposed with a Reaper trying to give you a brain hemorrhage, well, that was just a little different.

"What," Chakwas's eyes snapped up to his and she did not look amused.

Kaidan sighed, about to scratch the back of his head before he felt his burn wounds pull and protest and managed to suppress a wince of pain. He had barely moved since arriving and so his body had gotten used to the minor pain that came from resting. "Harbinger did something to every single biotic in the area, or at least from what I could tell. I don't know what, but I saw a couple of asari commandos fall to the ground twitching before they died, blood from their mouth, eyes, nose…brain hemorrhage."

"Major, Kaidan, I'll need to do at a full scan of your nervous system-"

"Doc, please, I'm fine," he shook his head, this time unable to suppress the sudden bout of nausea that came with the movement, "I just…I want to stay with Shepard, okay? I need to know that she's all right, that she'll be fine."

Chakwas frowned, her expression clearly indicating that she was warring with the romantic inside of her and the professional doctor who was clearly concerned for her two patients. It seemed the romantic won out as she shook her head and gestured to the bed next to Shepard, "Fine. You can stay, but I want you to at least get some rest. I'll do some cursory scans, nothing invasive, but you can stay. However, if I do find that something is wrong-"

"I'll let you do a deeper scan," Kaidan understood Chakwas' conditions. A deeper scan of his brain and nervous system meant heavy sedation. He wanted to be awake or at least somewhat awake when Liara came back with the Cerberus scientist. But he also knew that it could be a while.

"You also look like you can use some more painkillers for those burn wounds," the doctor moved away from the bed to allow him to lie down on it before she ran her omnitool over his head. He shifted his body a little so that he could look at Shepard's still form while she did her scans.

"If it's not too much trouble," he asked with a crooked smile. He had not realized how tired he was as he shifted a little more on the bed. He blinked furiously, trying to stay awake, but the exhaustion, combined with his wounds and Harbinger nearly frying his brain proved too much for his exhausted body to keep up as he felt himself drift off. He shifted one more time, as he made sure the last thing he saw before sleep overtook him was Shepard's face. She was safe…they were safe…

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes:<strong>

As with Bioware's dialogue choices, I'm rarely using Shepard's first name in this story, preferring for the slightly more "personalized" Shepard so fans aren't alienated. I've read stories where people use their own Shepard's first names and to me, it seems a little impersonal and I can't relate to their Shepards that much.

Oh, I have to mention while I am a huge Kaidan fan, I'm also a rabid Garrus fangirl – just not the shipping kind. I love the mentor/student relationship between Garrus and Shepard, that's all. I also believe in the "Shepard Reaper Indoctrination" theory regarding the endings – hence, my "fourth" option.


	4. Chapter 3: Remnants on the Battlefield

Mass Effect 3: Leaving Earth

By: Shadow Chaser

**Disclaimer:**

Mass Effect does not belong to me; it belongs to Bioware, EA, Casey Hudson, and its writers. Commander Shepard, however, sort of belongs to me – after all, I created her and personalized her (at least I wish I can claim to own her, it's all Bioware's writing so I sort of claim her).

**Story:**

* * *

><p><em>Chapter 3 – Remnants on the Battlefield<em>

The next time Kaidan awoke was to voices murmuring near him. He slowly blinked open his eyes, the room losing focus for a second before focusing once more. The slightly blurred figures of Liara, Chakwas, Admiral Hackett of all people, and some guy he did not know were crowded near the foot of Shepard's bed, the four of them talking amongst themselves. Chakwas was making some hand gestures while Liara chimed in, Hackett and the other guy nodding occasionally.

The space battle must have gone well, he supposed, otherwise Hackett would have never left the _Orizaba_. Kaidan's gaze slid away from them towards himself as he noticed someone, most likely Chakwas, had covered him in a thin, but insulated blanket and the slight stabbing pain in one of his wrists told him that he had also been hooked up to an intravenous nutrient feeder.

He supposed that was why he felt a little fuzzy. The IV line only dulled his hunger a bit, but did not completely eliminate it. His brain was still recovering from Harbinger's attack and from the battle, but at least he didn't feel utterly exhausted as if he had never slept. The only times he felt exhausted after waking up from a deep sleep was when he had overextended his biotic capabilities and had not had a chance to replenish his body with food. Chakwas certainly knew how to take care of biotic patients unlike many of the Alliance's doctors.

He absently reached down and gently tugged the line out of his wrist, rubbing the area where the needle punctured his skin a bit to make it heal faster. Every marine received a few augmentations to boost immunity and healing abilites though those in the N-Program received further augmentations to enhance their combat and mental abilities. As he continued to gently massage his wrist, he noticed that Shepard herself had seemingly moved since he had slept. Before, she had been lying flat on her back, her arms at her sides, for all intents and purposes looking eerily like a body on a slab in the morgue.

But now, he saw that she had turned to her side, her hands curled towards her chest in a slight fetal position and her still face was turned towards him. He could clearly see the scars, blood, and burns that dotted her beautiful skin, where parts of her hair were singed off. He could almost imagine those simple blue eyes opening to stare at him, getting lost in them like he had done so many times. She was missing some skin from the tip of her slightly crooked nose and there was a definitely bleeding gash on her lips, but all of it was still covered by the eerie glow that surrounded her.

It was also then that noticed something odd about her hands that were curled near her chest. She was clutching something in her hands, he realized as he blinked and stared harder at her hands. He had thought the glow around her was brighter in certain places, where her skin folded around joints and that sort of thing, but it looked like the glow was definitely very bright around her hands and that she was holding…what looked like to be a small crystal.

That was where the glow was brightest and Kaidan wondered why no one had seen it before.

"Hey Doc…?" he croaked out, surprised at how tired he sounded before clearing his throat again, "Dr. Chakwas?"

The muted conversation at the foot of Shepard's bed immediately ceased and he felt everyone's eyes on him before he gestured vaguely to Shepard's curled form. "There's…something in her hands…"

Dr. Chakwas, Liara, and the other man immediately moved towards Shepard's head, blocking his view of her as he groggily pushed himself up from the bed, blinking his eyes owlishly. The blanket slid from his body to pool at his waist, but he didn't need it anymore, feeling a lot better than he had when he had first laid down on the medical bed. He watched as the three started up another muted conversation, three omnitools flashing over Shepard as they compared notes or scanned them over Shepard's form.

He noticed that still no one touched her and glanced back to see that the two crew members who had carried here were still lying still on their beds, both of them now with blankets covering them and various equipment monitoring their health. He supposed that they were still being sedated. It was also then that Kaidan realized that Admiral Hackett had moved to stand silently by the foot of his bed and flushed in embarrassment before saluting the Admiral.

"Sorry sir, I, uh, didn't notice you there," he lowered his arm as the Admiral returned his salute.

"At ease, Major," Hackett replied quietly, "I understand that you were severely wounded during the ground battle."

"No sir," Kaidan shook his head, wondering where he had gotten that assessment, "just a little burned, that's all."

The grizzled old man raised a skeptical eyebrow at him as he stood up, "You may want to check your medical records then. Or perhaps get another assessment from Dr. Chakwas. You've been asleep for the past sixteen hours and it's been nearly twenty-four hours since Harbinger and many of his forces bugged out, Major."

Kaidan paused for a second, staring at Hackett before the Admiral gestured for them to move a bit away from the others. However, they did not leave the medical bay and he noticed the Admiral kept them parallel to where Chakwas and the others were surrounding Shepard. It seemed that the Admiral wanted to keep an eye on her too for the moment. It had been nearly twenty-four hours? He had slept for sixteen of them? And it was a natural sleep too as he didn't feel any of the after effects of sedation which meant that Chakwas had not found any serious lingering issues in his brain when she had scanned him.

"Major," the Admiral shifted his feet a little, "what happened down here? Lieutenant Vega and Major Coates were only able to give a partial report."

"Partial?"

"Both reported that around the same time Shepard set off the Citadel's self-destruction, Harbinger and a few of the other Reapers blasted the area with some kind of noise that affected all biotics in its radius. We were only able to get a partial report because most of the biotics that had been affected, including our own and alien ones are either deceased or brain dead. We are trying to get a report from Ensign Rodriguez who was with the Grissom Academy students, but she is in a catatonic state after seeing her fellow recruit, Ensign Prangley, rendered into a brain dead state by the Reaper that was near them. Their commanding officer is trying to get her to cooperate with us."

Hackett leveled him with an even stare, "Major, you're one of the few who was able to survive that ground zero attack besides Dr. T'soni here."

Kaidan was not surprised that it had been Shepard who set off the Citadel's self-destruction protocols, probably through the Keepers, but he did not understand why she did it. However, he did understand the Admiral's unspoken words. "What did Lieutenant Vega and the others tell you?"

"That it was like every Reaper's brassy roar, except this one seemed to last a while. Then all of the biotics at various times started to warp, throw, anything you can think of doing with biotics they did it; except sometimes they hit their fellow soldiers or started to become…uncontrollable. Eventually some collapsed to the ground…and well…"

"Yeah…" Kaidan looked away for a moment before sighing, "I saw at least one asari commando die of a brain hemorrhage in front of me during that…attack sir." He could feel the beginnings of a migraine coming on, the slight pressure near his temples, but ignored it. "I don't know what Harbinger did, but it felt like someone was trying to squeeze my brain down my spine. The only way to stop that feeling was to release some of the biotic static pressure, but each time the energy was channeled, the pressure came back even more quickly. So…"

"Eventually it would be too much," Hackett tapped his chin thoughtfully before shifting a little, "Major, I would like to ask another question, this one is a bit more personal."

"Sir," Kaidan shifted himself to parade rest, sensing the mood becoming a little more serious than before.

"Ignoring the fraternization regulations, did Commander Shepard say or do anything before and even during the ground assault?" Hackett asked and Kaidan stilled.

Ever since Shepard had gone AWOL and stole the _Normandy_ from Citadel drydock to go after Saren on Ilos, their relationship had been somewhat of an open secret amongst the crew. He knew that not everyone would have been able to keep their mouth shut and knew that the rumors would have eventually made it to high command. But surprisingly they did nothing, even though he thought he caught more than one meaningful glance from Anderson whenever Shepard reported to the Citadel before the _Normandy SR-1_'s destruction.

That rumor had to have made it to Hackett's ears; the man constantly gave Shepard assignments and knew who was on her team from their individual reports back to him. But to hear it now from the Admiral himself hit home for Kaidan. It told him that high command had been well aware of their relationship, but ignored it for the sake of the fact that it was Shepard who got results. He did not know how Hackett himself felt, but as he met the Admiral's icy blue stare, he realized that Hackett was angry – perhaps even furious.

He was angry at Shepard and her actions; angry that the Citadel was destroyed and took the Crucible along with it. But as Kaidan digested the question posed to him, he realized that behind the anger was a plea to understand _why_ Shepard did it. Why did she destroy what the Alliance, the coalition had spent months to build. Why in that moment above the battles that raged across the planet did she do what she did? And Hackett was trying to understand that by asking the one person whom Shepard trusted and loved beyond anything else, Kaidan Alenko.

Kaidan realized how easy it would have been for him to shrug and lie, to say that he did not know. He could have made up some bullshit story for the Admiral and realized that the man would buy it. That was how much Hackett relied upon Shepard and in turn, trusted her with so many delicate missions. Her N7 designation meant the best assignments and equipment, but this was beyond a simple designation of an N7 marine or even a Spectre of the Citadel Council. Hackett believed in Shepard and wanted something to validate that belief in the aftermath of what had been viewed as their greatest hope against the Reapers utterly destroyed.

"No sir," Kaidan replied quietly shaking his head, "not that I know of. I knew that Admiral Anderson had ordered Joker to check on her well-being and you know of my reports to you." When he had communicated with Hackett his intention of signing back on with the _Normandy_ under Shepard's command, even though he now technically outranked her, the Admiral had approved of his transfer. But there had also been a request, not an order, but a request to watch out for her; that she was like a daughter to him after losing his own children years before, and wanted to make sure she was all right. It was a request that he had initially decided against until after their first mission together after he had rejoined – the monastery with the Ardat-Yakshi.

He remembered finding Shepard staring at the monument wall that had been erected with each person's name that had served aboard the _Normandy_ in all of her years service. Both Cerberus and Alliance names were on there, but they were all the same. She had run a finger through both Thane Krios and Mordin Solus' names. He knew that their recent deaths hit her hard even though she never outwardly projected that feeling of loss. Though she did not say anything, he knew that she had been thinking of the Justicar that they had met up at the monastery. Samara was her name and the only thing he knew about her was that she had Ardat-Yakshi children, and had helped Shepard during her battle with the Collectors. But seeing Shepard standing by the wall looking so grim, a far cry from the indomitable woman he remembered, spurred him to add a more personal note to his reports to Admiral Hackett.

"I do," Hackett nodded once, pulling Kaidan from his thoughts.

"Then you know of the nightmares she has been apparently having," it had been one of his last reports to Hackett before they jumped to the staging ground to meet Hackett's flagship, the _Orizaba_. Ever since they had reaffirmed their relationship, he had not known about her nightmares until that night when she had woken up and asked him if all of it was worth it. The sheer defeat and lack of hope in her voice then had bothered him greatly before he tried to reassure her as best as he could. They needed her, he needed her, but it was the first time he had realized the pressure upon her was really cracking her. He had known before, but had hoped that with his support she was able to push past it – it seemed like that was not the case.

"Yes," Hackett looked thoughtful, "and that's what's worrying me." They all had suffered through the horrors of what the Reapers had done, all had seen terrible things in their own right, but they also knew that Shepard had perhaps witnessed even more horrors. Her family lost at age sixteen to Batarian raiders, her unit lost on Akuze because of Cerberus' plans, dying rather violently and brought back in an equally violent fashion, the Prothean beacon jammed inside of her head, the list went on and on.

They both knew that Shepard did not like to lose anyone and even though put on a professional face to weather the losses of crewmates and friends. Kaidan sometimes had to wonder what her psych evaluation was like, but speculated that she would not have gotten the position she had without at least overcoming some of those obstacles. She was strong, certainly stronger than anyone he knew of, but the unspoken question was hanging in the air between them: did Shepard crack and destroy the Citadel and Crucible because she could not handle it anymore?

Kaidan shook his head, both mentally and figuratively, "Sir, I believe she knew what she was doing if she made the decision to destroy the Citadel and Crucible." He could never doubt her, not after all they had been through.

Hackett nodded grimly, "Her last transmission was that the Crucible was a trap. I have reason to believe that she was talking to someone else while she made the transmission. She said she would not make a choice from the choices presented to her that she would choose of her free will."

Kaidan had to smile a little, "That sounds like her. Sir, was that Anderson…?"

"I don't think so," the Admiral scratched his chin, "our scanners indicated that there was one life sign, Shepard's, so we do not know whom she was talking to."

"Oh," he glanced back to still see Chakwas and the others gathered around Shepard, "do you think that it may be the cause of what's keeping her in, uh, that stasis bubble?"

"Hard to speculate," Hackett also looked towards where Shepard was curled up to the side, "Dr. Anderson has been running tests on the readings Dr. Chakwas was able to get from whatever is keeping Shepard in that stasis."

"Anderson?"

"The Admiral would have been proud to know that his son had become one of our top scientists working on the Crucible. Cerberus tried to launch an attack on us while we had been assaulting their main base. Half of the top staff including Dr. Lok sacrificed themselves to stop the Cerberus strike team and Dr. Anderson took over as lead."

Now that Kaidan got a real good look at the other man, he did notice a resemblance to the Admiral. It wasn't too noticeable, but there were bits and pieces in the younger Anderson. He supposed that the scientist got most of his looks from his mother's side.

Hackett sighed, bringing Kaidan's attention back to the Admiral, "I'll tell the Council something, but now that the Reaper forces have all but started retreating from Earth, I don't know what will hold this coalition together."

"Have the Reapers retreated back into dark space?"

"Current reports indicate no," the Admiral shook his head, "but the only good thing to come out of this is that it seems like Harbinger fled. You'll probably want to know that the Council's currently housed on the _Destiny Ascension_; a majority of the people fled the Citadel when the Reapers attacked en masse and they're scattered everywhere."

"Thanks," Kaidan had nearly forgotten that he now had some leeway as both a Spectre and Systems Alliance marine. He had meant to ask Shepard for any tips or pointers about how she had juggled that responsibility, but didn't get the chance with everything going on. He supposed the Council would want a report soon, but he wasn't too keen on leaving Shepard's side at the moment.

"Earth isn't saved by any means Major," the grizzled old Admiral looked tired, "and I intend to make sure that all Reapers are out of the Sol System before moving onto the other planets."

"Understood sir," the message was clear, as a Spectre he had some pull with the Council and like Shepard before him, he had to use that influence to keep the Council here instead of having them run to their own systems. The priority was still Earth, Crucible or no Crucible.

"Now, if you'll excuse-"

It was as if everything happened at once as a sudden zapping noise filled the air before Chakwas, Liara, and Dr. Anderson leapt back from where they had been surrounding Shepard's bed. At the same time the omnitool on Chakwas' arm started to beep furiously before hundreds of stats and monitors filled with charts and diagrams he did not recognize popped up, all of them seemingly flashing red.

"What-" Kaidan did not even get a single step towards Shepard before he found himself ushered out of the med bay by Chakwas. At the same time, a couple of the nurses who worked with Chakwas ran in. It was only after the doors to the med bay closed in front of his face that he realized he was standing with Admiral Hackett, Liara, and Dr. Anderson, the four of them staring door. The lights that filtered out from the windows of the med bay into the crew mess dimmed a bit, meaning that Dr. Chakwas was prepping for surgery.

"Well," Liara started and Kaidan turned to see her extending a small stasis field around the small crystal that had been in Shepard's hands, "this…is interesting."

"What…is it?" Kaidan watched the crystal rotate slowly in Liara's stasis field. It was not glowing like it did before in Shepard's hands and in fact, looked utterly harmless.

"I don't know," the asari admitted, "but we weren't doing anything before it suddenly just dissipated the field around Shepard."

"Fascinating," Dr. Anderson reached a tentative hand out before drawing it back and clearing his throat, "excuse me, Admiral, but do you mind if Dr. T'soni and I take this back to the other scientists in the exploration flotilla to study?"

"Yes I do mind Doctor," Hackett frowned, "keep it on the ground until we are sure it isn't a threat to the fleet."

"Admiral, I'll have Javik look at it in the command post," Liara nodded in agreement as the doctor frowned a little, but did not protest.

"Do so, if this is Prothean or otherwise, he would know a lot more about it-"

Hackett stopped talking as the sound of booted feet hurrying towards them made them all look up to see Miranda Lawson making a bee line towards them after seemingly rushing out of the elevator. She nodded quick greetings to them before tapping her omnitool and opened the med bay doors. Kaidan only got a quick glimpse of a nurse hurrying over with blood pouches followed by Dr. Chakwas holding a few instruments, dressed for what looked like intensive surgery before the door closed once more and locked.

"I'm not surprised she had the codes to hack into the doors," Liara murmured beside him before pressing a gentle hand on his arm, "I'm sure Shepard will be all right."

"Yeah…I hope so too," Kaidan muttered as he stared at the closed med bay doors.

* * *

><p>Garrus Vakarian tilted his neck to the side, cracking some the cartilage in there before settling himself against his sniper rifle once more. Sighting down the scope, he adjusted the focus with a feather-light brush of his talons against his well-worn, but functional Widow. Ever since he had received it as a gift from Shepard, he had spent hours tinkering it, adjusting it and readjusting it as he came across mods and other sundry items to make the rifle like an extension of his own body. Shepard had gifted him with the rifle after finding it in a discarded pile in the Collector ship a little over a year ago now.<p>

At first he had refused, saying that since she too liked her sniper rifles, it should be hers, but she said she was satisfied with her trusty Mantis whom she called her darling husband and her baby shotgun. He had a feeling some kind of human double entendre joke had passed over his head with that conversation. Plus she had said she was more than likely to blow off her own arm due to the fact that the Widow was an anti-materiel rifle and not meant to be used by humans who were constantly running around the battlefield. He supposed that she had been right; after all, he had an exoskeleton of sorts, while she was a little more…squishy. Though he supposed squishy could have well applied to him considering that he ate a rocket to his face from that gunship back on Omega.

It wasn't until after they had returned to Citadel space to make their report regarding the Quarian and Geth alliance only a month and half ago that he realized Shepard had all but lied about not being able to use the Widow. Admiral Hackett had them deploy to Cyone to help an advance team sent there to help restart a fuel reactor that he caught her picking up another Widow. He had teased her about it and she had only smiled at him, the same tight smile that he had long recognized as when she was stressed before Kaidan had nudged him to shut up.

He had been puzzled about that and Kaidan had quietly explained that the Widow Shepard carried was Legion's. He had commented that she might blow her arm off from the recoil, but the biotic had shook his head with a grim smile. He had then told him that Shepard gave him access to the Cerberus files in order to reassure him that she was herself and found out that she had a skeletal and muscular structure that nearly rivaled a krogan's redundant system. She essentially could punch a hole through the _Normandy_ without breaking a sweat and could most certainly carry an anti-materiel rifle and shoot it without breaking bones.

It had surprised him, but that had worn off quickly. She was still the same old Commander Shepard he knew and followed, but it had told him that she was still reluctant to tell others about how much Cerberus had to rebuild her. Still, as far as he was concerned, Shepard was a good woman and a very honorable one. He didn't care if she was built differently inside now, she was still Commander Shepard and the same person he would follow into hell and back – which in hindsight, he already had.

Satisfied with his scope adjustment, just a minor millimeter adjustment, he flipped through his visor's ambient music playlist. Nothing too heart-pounding, but perhaps something with a low, but fast beat would do. It would be perfect for what he was currently doing, which was waiting for his prey to come around the metaphoric corner.

The music had only gone a few seconds into its track before the crackle of his comm. made him a little more alert, but he did not move from his position. He was too much of a professional to let something like that disturb him, though he was still hyper aware of his surroundings. "We're leading one your way in a few minutes Garrus."

"Roger that," he acknowledged Tali's hushed call before a few seconds later the distant angry shriek of a banshee echoed off of the nearly silent field of rubble. He slowly let a breath out as he consciously let sight back into his left eye. He knew that some snipers liked to close the eye that was not on the scope, but Garrus had trained himself to keep both eyes open, to keep his depth perception accurate instead of relying on mods to do the work for him.

He was lying upon a makeshift pile of rubble in part of what the humans had called Trafalgar Square in this large city, a kilometers away from the main compound, but nonetheless one of the places where they had been getting reports of banshees haunting the area. It had been over twenty-four human hours since Harbinger and his Reaper forces had left London, leaving behind the straggler Reaper Destroyers which had been promptly destroyed by orbital strikes.

But besides the leftover Destroyers to contend with, there had also been the problem of husks and humans who had been in the middle of being indoctrinated. Clinics had immediately cropped up to deal with the threat and a blanket order had been issued across Earth. No husk were to be destroyed and instead, were to be captured, sedated, and brought to a nearby clinic where doctors and scientists were already hard at work trying to reverse engineer whatever tech was left from the dragon's teeth to cure the husks.

However, there were only two variants that had kill orders on them, banshees and brutes; brutes because of the incompatible turian-krogan physiology and banshees by order of whatever was left of the asari government. They did not want anything remotely like the Ardat-Yakshi to be let loose or spirits forbid, cured. Garrus knew that if Shepard was conscious, she would have immediately objected, but even he too agreed with the asari government regarding banshees. The Ardat-Yakshi were too dangerous to even considered curing. Sometimes Shepard was just a little too soft towards certain things, though he suspected that leaving the Rachni Queen to her death wasn't softness on the Commander's part.

They had already captured and sedated four husks and one cannibal found wandering in the area and Garrus had sent part of his team, a group of ragtag marines some of whom had heard of him, back to escort their charges. Then one member of his team, an asari commando who had a predisposition to being an Ardat-Yakshi, but was not one, had told him that she sensed a banshee in the area. He had immediately set up his trap and sent a few of his team forward to lure the creature out. He hated banshees; they were slippery, quiet, and damn good assassins. They were so silent that only their inhuman shrieking gave them away and even then, it paralyzed the hardiest of soldiers with fear before they struck lightning fast. At least one could hear brutes a kilometer away.

He wished he carried one of the humans' conventional heavy weapons on him. It would have made killing the banshee a lot easier. Maybe even use one of their M-920 Cains, affectionately named the nuke launcher even though it had no radiation to speak of. There was nothing like overkill in his opinion when it came to banshees. But since they had little time to prepare, his trusty Widow would have to do the job.

He heard the soft patter of gunfire growing louder to his left and shifted his scope down the main street, focusing once more. The idea was for his advance team to draw the banshee towards him and the other snipers he had set up around Trafalgar Square. They would whittle the banshee's biotic barrier down, but their main objective was to be the bait and not put themselves in harm's way. It only took a few seconds later for Garrus to spot Tali and Lieutenant Vega running towards him.

A split second later, the familiar warping blue wave materialized, and the banshee appeared near the two. As soon as the banshee materialized he saw both Tali and Vega turn back around and stop, firing their weapons to draw the creature's attention instead of trying to seek out the others.

"Hold," he whispered over the comm., evening his breathing out. "Now!" he sucked in a breath and as soon as he started to let it out, brushed the trigger of his Widow. The weapon immediately responded to his touch as he jerked back a little from the recoil. He managed to keep himself steady in time to see his bullet along with four others rip through the banshee's shields and impact her head, killing the creature instantly.

The banshee gave a long shriek before collapsing to the ground and through the scope, he saw it slowly dissolving as cheers rang through the comm.. "Scratch one!" his mandibles parted in grin as he pushed himself up from where he was lying and waved to his team down on the ground, the other snipers also leaving their perches.

"Yeah! That's how you take one down you sons of bitches!" Lieutenant Vega crowed as he stood near Tali, pumping his assault rifle into the air.

Garrus slid down the rubble pile to join them, rotating his left arm a little. Though he had mostly healed from his burn wounds, he had been told that his left arm still needed a little work and for him to occasionally stretch it so that the new carapace would grow back stronger.

"Sense anything else Adien?" he turned to the asari commando as she slid down from her perch to join them. The two other snipers in his group were humans who had fought with Major Coates. The Major had been promoted to command all of the Earth forces after it had been determined that Admiral Anderson was MIA. Garrus had met Evaana Adien during their ill-fated mission to Thessia, the asari sniper barely escaping the carnage wrought when the Reapers took over the area near the temple.

"No sir," she shook her head, "I think we're in the clear for now."

"Good, let's call it a day then," he nodded, "drinks are on me."

Vega and the others cheered as they made their way back to the command center. Perhaps things were looking up now that the Reapers had fled Earth. He could only hope that Palaven would be next.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes:<strong>

I don't remember if the asari sniper you met on Thessia had a name, so I'm giving her one because it's been a while since I played that mission and the Mass Effect wiki doesn't have her name on there. I've also given Hackett command of the _Orizaba_, which if Shepard had a spacer background, was the flagship of the Fifth Fleet (and Hackett's fleet). So since my Shepard isn't a spacer and is a colonist instead, Hackett gets the _Orizaba _as his flagship.


	5. Chapter 4: Familiar Surroundings

Mass Effect 3: Leaving Earth

By: Shadow Chaser

**Disclaimer:**

Mass Effect does not belong to me; it belongs to Bioware, EA, Casey Hudson, and its writers. Commander Shepard, however, sort of belongs to me – after all, I created her and personalized her (at least I wish I can claim to own her, it's all Bioware's writing so I sort of claim her).

**Story:**

* * *

><p><em>Chapter 4 – Familiar Surroundings<em>

Garrus carefully navigated his way around the crowded mess hall that was in the command center. It had taken his team a little longer to return than they had initially anticipated when they stopped to help another team out hunting brutes and banshees. That team had lost two of their marines to a banshee who was a little faster than they had thought. They managed to corner the creature and kill it before it could do anymore harm and both teams had returned a little worst for wear. Tali had immediately gone to see one of the doctors set up in a gigantic medical ward outside of the command center. It was protected by several missile batteries and turrets, but it was the start of the long process for Earth and its soldiers to heal.

He knew that she had been running a mild fever, her previous treatment of antibiotics and antiseptic to cleanse her wounds doing wonders for her immune system. Even the little bit of coding that she had received as a gift from one of the geth to help her immune system adapt more readily to life outside of the suit had helped downgrade her fever in the past few hours. But she had still insisted on accompanying him outside of the compound to help "clean up" the stragglers. Who was he to deny her since he knew how handy she was with her shotgun and because he wanted her close to him.

He wondered if this was what it was like between Kaidan and Shepard. Garrus was no stranger to relationships, but he had to admit, it had been a while since he had felt the instinctive need to protect someone he felt a kind of loving affection for. Shepard did not count as he saw her as an equal and had been readily pleased that she had never seen him as someone less than herself. He did not know where he and Tali would end up, but for now, he was willing to see where their relationship would go.

"Hey Garrus, over there," Vega tugged on his arm as he followed behind him and pointed towards where Kaidan, Liara, and Cortez were sitting. Garrus nodded a greeting as the _Normandy's_ resident shuttle pilot and procurement specialist spotted them and waved at them to join them.

He dodged a few marines who were running out before nearly spilling his food as two krogans followed by a salarian wearing STG colors dashed by, chattering rapidly with one another before finally making it to the table and sat down with a relieved sigh. "Have fun dancing Garrus?" Kaidan eyed him a little ruefully before taking a bite out what looked like a hamburger, or at least what passed for military ration hamburgers. There had been a dextro-amino equivalent offered to him when he joined the line for food, but it looked as appetizing as a grey gooey paste that he had once eaten from a MRI.

"Whoa, that's a lot of food there Major," Vega sat next to Cortez, shoving the man over a little to whom the pilot only shook his head and rolled his eyes.

"You toss a few things with your brain and people are always on your case about calorie intake," Kaidan shrugged, but did not look bothered by the question. "You've seen me eat after biotic heavy missions, so don't act so surprised."

"Besides, that's half of my food too," Liara chimed in, a cheeky grin on her face as Vega's jaw dropped open before he closed it and coughed, blushing furiously. Garrus laughed a little at the Lieutenant's discomfort. He could imagine the Lieutenant trying not to think of Liara packing away that much food and also keeping her shape.

"Uh…well…"

"I'm only joking," Liara shook her head as Cortez nudged him in the ribs this time before laughing over his own food.

"Uh…yeah," Vega hastily dug into his own food and started to eat like he had not eaten in days.

"So you're looking well," Garrus poked at his own food, the option of a blue…thing that was supposed to be eggs looked marginally more appetizing than the grey thing that was a hamburger. Nonetheless, he forced himself to eat a couple of forkfuls, his mandibles flaring in irritation at the slightly chalky taste. He wished he had some more of Dr. Michel's chocolates…

"Yeah, wasn't more than a few scratches. The Kodiak's fixed up too. Managed to find two families that had been holed up all of this time in some ancient underground bunker that had been designed for a war about three centuries ago called World War II. Took us a while to convince them that we weren't indoctrinated or anything, but I call that a win," Cortez looked proud at his accomplishment and Garrus nodded.

"It'll probably take some time for the military to convince the families that went into hiding or weren't indoctrinated that it's safe to come out now. Well, relatively safe. Still got banshees and brutes to worry about," he shrugged before stabbing another forkful of blue eggs.

"Any progress with the husks?" Vega asked, having recovered from his previous embarrassment.

"Nothing so far," Liara shook her head as she scooped some of what looked like a gelatin dessert and ate it, "most of the Crucible scientists were housed on the exploration flotilla and were ordered to hold position by Jupiter. Admiral Hackett's sending a few down now, mostly the ex-Cerberus scientist group lead by Dr. Cole, to see if any progress could be made on reverse engineering the dragon's teeth scattered across the planet."

"I hate to say it, but Cerberus may have an advantage over us in this one," Vega muttered, "the guys do know a lot about Reaper tech and how to tinker with parts of it."

"Yeah…" ever since Shepard had told him about discovering that Cerberus troops had been turned into some kind of weird hybrid between a husk and human, he had never been able to sleep well. Then again, since the suicide mission to the Collector base and back he had never slept well, not with the impending knowledge of the Reapers arriving.

"EDI says that she is helping the scientists filter the downloads gathered from the Illusive Man's base," Liara continued quietly.

"How is she?" Garrus did not have strong feeling either way for the unshackled A.I., but watching her body abruptly collapse in the middle of the battlefield was a little jarring. He had gotten used to seeing EDI in a humanoid form and had gotten used to her dry quips to help relieve tension while they sometimes faced impossible odds that he had come to see her as a fellow teammate instead of the co-pilot of the _Normandy_.

"Better," Liara looked happy to be relaying the news, "she's almost back up to one-hundred percent operating capabilities, but she says that it'll take her another day or so to reconnect herself to her physical body. I think she just wants to make sure her connection with the body is stronger this time."

"How about Shepard?" Vega asked.

One of Garrus' mandibles twitched in a wince. That was the question he was trying to avoid asking and hoped that Vega was able to pick it up too, judging by how quiet Kaidan had gotten as soon as the talk had gotten a little more serious. The fact that Kaidan was here, eating and making attempts at jokes meant that perhaps Shepard was better and maybe not in that stasis field-whatever-it-was. But he had stepped around the question in case Kaidan had been forced by Dr. Chakwas to eat and Liara and Cortez were there to keep an eye on him.

"Fine," Kaidan answered quietly, "in surgery."

Garrus blinked in surprise; that was news. "Surgery?" he could not help but blurt out and his mandible twitched again in another wince. _Way to keep a lid on your motor mouth, Vakarian_, a small voice that sounded suspiciously like his own muttered in his head. He had been a little callous, but the fact that Shepard was in surgery meant that she was out of that stasis field. When he had delivered the news to the others that Shepard was not dead and in fact was alive he had excluded all details about Dr. Chakwas' odd readings about how the stasis field said she was dead when she clearly drew breath at the same time. Morale had immediately improved and had quashed all rumors that had been flying around the battlefield about Shepard's demise.

Most had presumed that Shepard was recovering, but no one except for Kaidan and Liara had been allowed near the Normandy's med bay. Even Garrus had a hard time skirting around the armed guards posted outside the med bay when he had gone to the forward guns to retrieve his Widow.

The biotic shrugged, "Happened at least six, seven hours ago."

Ah, well, that certainly explained why Kaidan was here and why he was with Cortez and Liara. The two _were_ keeping an eye on Kaidan and it was probably Liara who had forced the human to at least eat something. And judging by a couple of empty plates, the Major had a definite need to replenish his body with food even if he was too stubborn to notice it.

Kaidan's omnitool suddenly flashed and he stopped eating to glance at it. "Crap, forgot about it too."

"What?" Vega asked through a mouthful of something that resembled pasta and a stringy substance that the humans called cheese. Apparently it had been made from their bovine's milk which he could not quite wrap his head around.

"Have to make a report to the Council, plus Jondum Bau's having a meeting afterwards," Kaidan pushed his chair back, wiping his hands clean on a napkin before gathering the rest of his food and plates onto a tray, "sorry, gotta run." With that he disappeared back into the crowd, leaving them alone at the table.

Liara sighed noisily, shaking her head before finishing her dessert, "At least it'll keep him occupied for now."

"Is it really that bad?" Garrus asked as Vega scooted over into Kaidan's abandoned seat, Cortez following suit into Vega's seat.

"I've never known the Major to, what's the human expression, mope, but he was worried for a while there," Liara rested her chin on her hand, "and from what I could gather based on Dr. Chakwas' readings before she had us all kicked out of the med bay was that the force field, stasis field, whatever you want to call it, was the only thing keeping Shepard alive for this long. Whatever she did getting through the Conduit and up into the Citadel and whatever happened up there, her vitals nearly flatlined once that field dissipated."

Garrus narrowed his eyes, "Kaidan doesn't know this."

"And he won't ever know it," Liara met his gaze squarely and Garrus could see why she was feared as both Matriarch Benezia's child and the Shadow Broker.

"Lola's tough, she'll make it," Vega shook his head, "the Collectors managed to kill her and all it did was make her pissed."

Garrus had to laugh at Vega's statement. It echoed his own that he had said months ago to Shepard about how her dying just only made her even angrier and go on a warpath against the Collectors.

"Something I said is funny Scars?" Vega asked, looking up at him.

"Just thinking of something else," Garrus replied. He didn't quite understand the human's tradition of nicknaming someone, but supposed it was Vega's quirk. Even Shepard had confided in him that she didn't get it either. "So, the Council's alive, eh?" He had no love for his fellow councilor, Sparatus Torik, considering him barefaced, but then again, he considered all politicians barefaced so there was that.

"They managed to escape to the _Destiny Ascension_ when the Reapers attacked the Citadel and moved it from its home cluster," Liara replied, "and before you asked, many of the turian refugees from Palaven and other colonies were able to escape too. I've been looking into their whereabouts, but right now there's a lot of information to be filtered."

"Thanks Liara," he really appreciated the fact that she was now the Shadow Broker. Sometimes it helped having friends in the shadiest of places. He also understood that there were probably others in the Broker's employ to whom she was searching for. So the fact that she acknowledged his unspoken worry made him all the more grateful. Maybe there should be a gift involved…or not considering that someone would have taken gifts the wrong way. Shepard seemed like the only one who was able to present gifts and deflect rumors of romantic interest at the same time. Then again, her gifts were usually the kind that put holes into people.

"Well, if they're thinking of leaving, ain't happening any time soon," Vega finished the last of whatever he was eating and leaned back in his chair.

"How do you figure?" Garrus was curious, "the Reapers have all but bugged out of the Sol System-"

"Dude, you should know from what we did today," the burly human shook his head, "still got a husk problem you know. And there are reports that a few of those little mini ones, the Destroyers, are still around in some of the cities. It ain't over yet."

"Council may disagree with you," Garrus countered and got a scathing look from Vega. He held up his hands, "I'm not disagreeing with you; I'm just letting you know what the current sentiment may be for non-human forces."

"Tch, yeah," Vega still looked a little peeved, but Garrus did not let it deter him.

"Now consider this, the Council is made up of the three-"

"Four-"

"Udina was a traitor and there's been no appointed representative-"

"Shepard is pretty much it," Vega countered.

"Good point, okay, four," Garrus conceded, "of the most advance and militaristically powerful races in the galaxy. Now considering that everyone single one of those races has been attacked by the Reapers, there's going to be four different opinions. Obviously, we want to take the coalition to Palaven and retake our homeworld. Tevos already wants to take back Thessia and only reluctantly agreed to provide asari support after she was personally attacked. And Valern…well…wait…" He tilted his head to the side considering the salarian councilor's position.

"He probably wants Dalatrass Linron dead and another Dalatrass more pliable to what's happened with the krogan in power," Liara interjected quietly, "though my recent reports suggest that Sur'Kesh has actually held out very well against Reaper forces. The salarians have some creative ways to halt the Reaper invasion."

"Okay, so reassessing the salarians, they probably are okay with wherever they're needed. So back to my point," Garrus nodded, "the turians and asari consider themselves important in their own right and they are right. We're providing a lot of the military backbone since your fleet wasn't even up to full strength after Sovereign's attack on the Citadel three years ago."

"And the asari?" Cortez jumped in before Vega could get another word in, having been mostly silent during their conversation.

"Probably the strongest biotic forces ever. I mean, I can see the benefits of liberating Thessia first; don't want anymore banshees headed our way."

"But I thought all of them were at the monastery…?" both humans looked confused.

"Those were only the ones who were confirmed to be Ardat-Yakshi," Liara shook her head, "there are some asari children who have matured and even led healthy lives, but have a genetic predisposition to becoming Ardat-Yakshi. Their…talents…are always latent, but they're there."

"Geez, that…" Vega did not finish his sentence as he shook his head.

"You also have to consider the other races too; krogan, hanar, drell, volus, even the elcor," he had been at the Embassies to get some more information from Sparatus regarding the situation back on Palaven when he spotted Shepard conversing with the elcor ambassador and had over heard the plaintive plea from the gigantic alien to have the _Normandy_ scan for survivors on Dekuuna. The ambassador had explained that no one else would send ships, stating that it was too dangerous and too full of Reapers to do so safely.

As soon as the _Normandy_ had picked up on survivor distress beacon, Garrus had immediately dispatched an order to a nearby turian patrol to go in and rescue the survivors. He had seen Shepard's look of surprise at his actions before he had sheepishly admitted to eavesdropping on her conversation with the elcor ambassador. Of course, Shepard had insisted that he accompany her to the Embassies the next time they docked and told the elcor ambassador that proper thanks should go to him.

"Tough choice," Vega sighed, "I hate politics."

"You and pretty much everyone here," Garrus agreed before glancing over to Liara, a sly smile on his face, "though I suspect our resident information broker here doesn't mind it at all."

"It's too much red tape," Liara nudged him none too gently against his side, "I prefer to get things done with minimal fuss."

"Well, at least orders right now are to patrol and clean up," Vega scraped his chair back and stood up, gathering his tray together, "I'll see you guys in a bit. Gonna get some shut eye while I can." The burly marine nodded at all of them before walking away.

"And I'm off to do another flyby in half an hour," Cortez also took his cue to leave, but before he did so leaned down a little to face Liara, "let me know if you need any help again."

"I will," Liara gave a slight smile before the pilot left.

"Intervention for our dear Major Alenko?" Garrus asked as he saw the pilot wave greetings to Tali and Javik, the latter of the two looking utterly bewildered by the sheer amount of people in the mess. He didn't blame the fierce Prothean warrior for following a little behind Tali, almost meekly if one could call it, as they made their way to their table.

"He needed one," Liara replied as both sat down in the seats that had been recently vacated.

"Feeling better?" he asked Tali who carried a few tubes with wrapped straw-like things on one end. She immediately set one down and plugged one into her face mask while nodding.

"The fever's still there, but its holding steady instead of fluctuating. The doctors say that if I keep my strength up and get a good night's sleep tonight, it should pass through my system by tomorrow morning. Luckily, the liveships are in orbit so they can provide us with the proper nutrient foodstuffs. The injured down here could sure use it."

"Any losses on their part?"

"Not that I know of," Tali replied, "Admiral Koris was able to keep the bulk of them away from the attacking Reaper forces when we made the jump to Earth. They were also used to house some of the refugees who escaped from the Citadel. Though I heard many of them are now being shipped down to parts of Earth that haven't been so devastated by Reaper forces so that our liveships aren't being taxed with the air filtration scrubbers being the way that it is."

"That's good. Do you know if any-"

"Pah! What is this?" Javik suddenly exclaimed and pushed away a bowl of the same pasta and stringy mysterious 'cheese' Vega had been eating.

"I believe the humans call it 'mac and cheese'," Liara looked like she was trying to hold in her laughter.

"Disgusting," the Prothean's four eyes narrowed as he glared at the offending food, "fit for the vermin."

"I don't know, heard it was a popular dish with the humans," Garrus feigned an air of nonchalance as he set his fork down. He loved ribbing Javik, even though the Prothean was more prone to glare and probably biotically throw him against the bulkhead than anything else. Though he had felt that Javik had mellowed a little in the time he had been unsealed from his stasis pod back on Eden Prime.

"And one wonders how the cavemen actually evolved," Javik muttered before spearing a piece of lettuce and crunching on it rather violently. They had all been surprised as to what the Prothean ate and there was one time when Javik had helpfully provided some interesting descriptions of what had been delicacies and food fifty-thousand years ago. That had been a rather…entertaining…group dinner to say the least. Even Shepard had looked a little queasy by the end of that and Garrus knew the woman was willing to try anything, including a krogan gargle blaster straight up. "Taste like the excrement of feces and other undesirables…"

This time Liara could not hold back her laugh and received a pointed look from the Prothean, but he did not say anything else. Garrus suspected that Javik respected Liara more than he let on, though kept up pretenses that he was still superior to all of them. He definitely showed more respect to Shepard than anyone else, but then again, Shepard deserved and earned that respect from anyone in his opinion. Anyone who disrespected her deserved a bullet or punch to their face.

A sudden loud cheer followed by shouts of "Chug, chug, chug!" made them turn to see a few tables down one of Aralakh company's krogans engaged in a three way drinking contest with a human and turian. Garrus shook his head ruefully. He secretly hoped that the turian would win, but it was more than likely the krogan would win due to their redundant system.

"That would have warranted immediate posting on the farthest frontier lines," Javik muttered in-between crunches of his salad.

"Oh relax Javik," Tali spoke up, "sometimes you have to learn to take the days you're given and live a little. If you spend too much time thinking and killing Reapers then who knows, you may end up like them."

Garrus winced; he expected Javik to take offense and go on some rant about how the Reapers needed to be stopped and so forth, but when no outburst erupted from the Prothean's mouth he stared at him and instead saw a very contemplative look on the Prothean's face.

"There would have been a time when I would have taken offense at your words, Tali'Zorah," Javik suddenly said in a quiet tone, "perhaps even before all of this had happened. But now…" He fell silent once more before looking down into his salad bowl, finding it utterly fascinating.

Garrus blinked, surprised at the Prothean's words. Did he just say what he thought he had said? It wasn't quite an apology nor was an admonishment, but rather and acknowledgment. He glanced at Liara and Tali and saw that the two were also surprised by Javik's words. Maybe there was some hope for the ornery Prothean after all…

"I have been looking over the notes and translations you have given to me asari," Javik continued, his tone gruff and to the point as if his previous words meant nothing, "it will take me some time to digest such information. I am not a scientist as you well know."

"I know-"

"The artificial woman, Miranda Lawson I believe the Commander has mentioned, has given me some more notes gathered," Javik did not let her finish, "but it seems that compared with the notes you have given to me the Crucible was built using the technology of ages beyond even my own."

"Yes, we know that-"

"Then I find it very curious as to why did you not ask yourself the origins of this data and the ease of translating it as you had said many times," the Prothean finished his salad and started on what looked like some human dessert called ice cream mixed with something that was clearly dextro-amino based sauce. When they had all found out that Javik could eat both levo-amino and dextro-amino foods and not have a fatal allergic reaction to either or, it had shocked all of them. But then again, he supposed that being the most advance race of his period and essentially having some form of all of the races of this cycle must have been the Reapers' ultimate design.

"It goes back many, many cycles," Liara frowned, her forehead knitting together in concern.

"Could the Crucible have been of Reaper origin?" Javik asked and Garrus stilled, the implications hitting him full. Beside him, Liara also froze and Tali who had been in the middle of finishing one tube and about to insert another stopped mid-transfer.

"…Goddess…" Liara breathed out quietly, "if…if it is…"

"Then Shepard…" Tali could not finish the rest of what she was about to say, but Garrus knew what she was thinking. Shepard might have known or rather, discovered the truth while she had been up in the Citadel. Something must have happened up there and maybe it would have explained why she triggered the self-destruct sequence of the Citadel to take out the Crucible at the same time. It might explain why Harbinger, of all Reaper forces, left Earth and abandoned his forces. If the Crucible's destruction was somehow linked to Harbinger and if the Crucible was of Reaper origin-

"All we knew about the Citadel was that it was left to be discovered by every space-faring race in each cycle. We know that the Reapers used the Keepers to activate it when the time came for them to harvest us," Garrus tapped one of his mandibles thoughtfully. "All we know is that the Citadel's been there for as long as time itself. We thought the Protheans built it…"

"Just like we thought the mass relays were built by the Protheans," Liara murmured, "but with what we saw on Ilos, even in the ruins of Eden Prime…that's not the case. The architecture is completely different. There are some similarities, but the design…Goddess…" She swallowed hard, "If the Crucible was Reaper-origin…what…" She shook her head, "We need proof. I need proof before I can present this to the Council-"

"What good would it do? The Crucible is Reaper origin. That only says that the Reapers have built a weapon in which to destroy our selves-"

"You don't understand Javik," Liara flushed, "everything, _everything_, is riding on this. If we could somehow figure out the origins, then maybe we can really start hitting them. We've already discovered that one of their weak points is the laser weapons port. If we can figure out how to defeat them, we can-" She abruptly got up, nearly tripping over her chair and it was only Garrus reaching out to steady her that she did not fall flat on her face. "I need to get back to the _Normandy_. Javik, you're coming with me!"

The Prothean's eyes narrowed a bit at the order before she threw a glare at him that made him blink twice. "I need your help in translating everything we've found in the Illusive Man's base regarding the Protheans and whatever technology you had discovered."

"My people-"

"Do you want this war to end or not?" Liara hissed quietly, looking every inch her mother's daughter.

Javik only stared at her for a few seconds, all four of his eyes blinking once before silently getting up and gesturing for her to lead the way. Garrus watched the two of them disappear back into the crowd and presumably to the _Normandy _which was still ground side.

"That…was interesting," Tali murmured quietly as she finally managed to hook her second tube up and started to eat whatever was inside. Garrus had not tried any of the quarians' foodstuffs, preferring a more protein-heavy diet than the vegetarian ones they apparently had, but he supposed that it was good…if one liked to eat a sort of paste. Tali had said that they only ate out of tubes whenever they were outside of their ships.

"Yeah, let's hope that maybe if Liara and Javik find something the Council won't go off on their own."

"You don't want to take Palaven back?" Tali asked, surprised.

He looked at her, "You know I do. But I've also learned in the past few years that having a hasty plan doesn't mean it's the right one. We can't go off half-cocked without something to back us up. Even if the Council did decide to hit Palaven next, who knows if the Reaper forces are as strong as the ones we had faced on Earth. The only thing we know is that Harbinger acted weirdly before he left and maybe, just maybe, the Crucible and Citadel's destruction had something to do with it."

Tali looked down a sigh lighting up her suit's lights, "Shepard probably has the answers, doesn't she?"

"It always seems like she does," Garrus reached out and grabbed one of her hands, squeezing it gently in reassurance, "besides, even if we all left now, do you really want to get into another battle without Shepard, Tali'Zorah vas Normandy?"

She lifted her head up and he could see the ghost of a smile behind her nearly opaque mask. "No. And I don't think you want to go either, not after spending all that time calibrating the weapons aboard the ship."

Garrus laughed, taking the ribbing joke for what it was. It was true that he spent a lot of time in the forward battery of the ship, but then again, he liked it there and would not have it any other way. "Finish up and let's see if Dr. Chakwas is done operating on Shepard so we can tell her to hurry up and get back into the fight."

"She's probably going to kick us out you know," Tali replied.

"Who, Shepard or Chakwas?"

"Both."

"Good point, but that's what your combat drone is for, right? Make it a fair three on two fight?"

"It'll be a three on one fight because I'll blame you."

"Hey," Garrus grinned as he stood up, cleaning his plates up and grabbing Javik and Liara's abandoned trays as Tali finished up her last tube. After dumping the contents into the refuse bin, the two of them made their way out of the mess and back towards the Normandy. Perhaps it was good that the Crucible was destroyed, after all, Harbinger had fled. One could only hope the tide of the war was turning.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes:<strong>

I can't quite remember if the Prothean VI Vendetta survives at the end of the assault on Cronos Station, but I'm thinking not considering that the VI was very fragmented by the time Shepard questioned it. Alas, I don't have a save file near that point and have to play through the whole level just to get to that point again – which I'm currently nowhere near it in my 2nd playthrough as of this posting (and don't want to go through again with my original playthrough because I like currently being able to mow down the enemy without breaking a sweat).

I would like to take this time to acknowledge and thank you the readers for author alerting, putting me on your favorites, and reviewing this fic so far. Your feedback is invaluable and I enjoyed discussing the game and the whole _Mass Effect_ universe with all of you.


	6. Chapter 5: Freedom Fighters

Mass Effect 3: Leaving Earth

By: Shadow Chaser

**Disclaimer:**

Mass Effect does not belong to me; it belongs to Bioware, EA, Casey Hudson, and its writers. Commander Shepard, however, sort of belongs to me – after all, I created her and personalized her (at least I wish I can claim to own her, it's all Bioware's writing so I sort of claim her).

**Story:**

* * *

><p><em>Chapter 5 – Freedom Fighters<em>

It had been a long time since Kaidan felt self-conscious enough to wonder if he was in over his head. Being a biotic meant that everyone was going to stare at you, no matter what. The most obvious feature was a noticeable scar in the back of the head, a little away from his left ear where his jack and implant were housed in. L2s had it worst and his uniform and armor both had a patch that signified what division he was in, thus drawing more stares. Some people still brought into the notion that biotics were either completely insane individuals, could read minds, or were both and had the ability to kill you with their brains. That last sentiment was a fact, but then again, the military applications of biotics felt a little more heroic than some of the other options that had been given to him after BAaT training.

There was no official uniform for Spectres, one wore what one wanted to wear, but Kaidan couldn't help but feel self-conscious standing aboard a large meeting room aboard the _Destiny Ascension_. For one thing, he was dressed in his Alliance combat blues, his assault rifle collapsed in its place, pistol by his side. The other thing was that he was the only human in a room full of turians, asari, and salarians. All who, if possible, looked a lot more hardened and combat-ready than he was.

Not for the last time in the past few minutes since he arrived and waited for the Spectre's unofficial spokesperson, Jondum Bau to start the meeting, he wished Shepard was here. She always had a cool confidence that soothed her teammates and instilled confidence in any situation; always had either some witty comeback or just plain inspiring words to diffuse tenuous situations. And he knew he could use that right now as he saw more than one Spectre glance his way.

He was the most junior of all in the room too, a newly appointed Spectre just before Udina decided to throw in his lot with Cerberus out of desperation. He knew that some distrusted him for who was his sponsor, but they were discreet enough to keep their thoughts to themselves. Others just stared at him in open wonder, the second human Spectre only to Shepard and her noticeable absence when she should have been standing next to him was felt. Thankfully no one had asked him where Shepard was though he suspected they all knew that she had been involved in the Citadel and Crucible's explosions. They were Spectres after all and information was in their trade for them to do their jobs.

The quiet murmur of conversation died as Jondum approached the front of the room, holding up his hands in a greeting to everyone. "It's rare that most of us get to meet each other, but in times like this, intel is what we need. I've linked up to most of the others stationed elsewhere, but there are a few of us who have not been able to report in or are deep in enemy territory gathering intel."

Some of the others nodded before the salarian Spectre cleared his throat, "As you all know, the Council has been discussing options as to where to focus our war efforts now that Earth has been all but free from most Reaper forces."

Kaidan frowned, resisting the urge to cross his arms and settled for clenching a fist in frustration. That had been a point of contention during his report to the Council regarding what had happened at ground zero near the transport beam, to which the Council had started to call another Conduit like the one on Ilos. He had made sure to emphasize that while Harbinger and most of his Reaper forces had bugged out of system, there were still some active Destroyers and even a few of the bigger Reapers themselves who were prowling some of the cities across the planet. However, the Council had countered that they were easier to destroy now and that plans to round up husks of all kinds to try to cure them had started. The Council had called it a victory and wanted a progress update on the efforts.

When he had given them specific instances, they had seemingly brushed it away and instead asked for numbers. He hated numbers and Shepard had been right – if they turned it into a numbers game, then they were no better than the Reapers. But the Council insisted and it was Admiral Hackett, who had accompanied him to meet with the Council, that had given them their numbers. It was also Hackett who had then chastised the Council for being so hasty to leave the Sol System when they needed to regroup their forces. That, at least had given the Council some pause before Ambassador Sparatus of the turians had said they would consider Hackett's words.

Kaidan had been a little surprised that the words had come from the turian councilor of all people, his memory of the councilor not that positive. He remembered him being an obstinate bureaucrat and utterly dismissive of Shepard's claims of Reapers and the rogue geth serving under Saren. But it seemed war brought out different sides of people and Sparatus was no exception.

"While most of us were deployed to the various cities here on Earth to provide whatever assistance we could to local resistance forces, we've received some reports from our fellow brothers and sisters out in other clusters," Jondum continued before tapping his omnitool. Immediately a projection of the Milky Way galaxy popped up and he expanded it so that everyone in the room could see it.

There were clusters of red and of blues and Kaidan could see that some of the blue-hued clusters were flashing red and even one of them suddenly turn red. A brief burst of murmured occurred when that happened before the Spectre cleared his throat, silencing the murmurs.

"Yes, this is real-time," the salarian confirmed what he had already suspected; "Rania Vasir, Menvra Orisoni, and Jethia Aethetes are currently escaping the Ialessa System. Their confirmation that Sanves has officially been wiped out only adds to the growing Reaper forces massing around the Athena Nebula."

The asari Spectres around the room all started to talk to one another and Kaidan felt a pang of sympathy for them. The loss of Thessia and of the Prothean VI had been a blow to everyone, and it seemed like the Reapers were systematically wiping out the most powerful and oldest race in this cycle. He watched as Jondum fiddled around with the map and pointed out several other clusters, two of which were in the turian sectors, the other two near the Terminus Systems.

"We've been receiving scattered reports that Palaven and its moon Menae are still holding out, but they will fall soon if krogan reinforcements are not kept up. A few of the turian colonies have also held out, but as you can see, the Reapers have been concentrating their forces on both the asari and turians."

"Is that where Harbinger ran off to?" a flanged feminine voice spoke up. Kaidan barely knew any of the Spectres' names, having been unable to learn much about his fellow comrades since he had been all but traversing the galaxy with Shepard after Udina's coup. But he saw everyone's heads turn to the turian who spoke up, a frown on his face. No, it was a female turian, he realized, not a male. The lack of spiny headcrests was what set the females apart from the males and he was a little surprised. As far as he knew, female turians were a rare sight outside of their home system. He did not know why and never got a chance to ask Garrus about it, but he did know that they too were fierce military warriors.

"Fedorian, I know you want avenge your father's death-"

"Damn straight," the female turian's mandibles flared, "every one of us in this room has someone they want to avenge. I just want to shove a nice neutron bomb up Harbinger's ass and blow him past the spirits from whence he came."

Most of the other turians in the room raised their fists and cheered a little at her statement before she gave a pointed look at Jondum who shook his head at the display.

"Admirable," the salarian shook his head a little, "but to answer your question Siona, no, there's been no sighting of Harbinger since he left Earth."

"Maybe the human knows?" the turian looked at him and Kaidan frowned. He got the distinct feeling that he was being viewed under a microscope by her, evaluated and easily discarded at the same time.

"The human has a name," as soon as the words tumbled out of his mouth Kaidan knew he had lost some ground to the female turian and perhaps the respect of the other Spectres in the room. He could have blamed the gnawing dull pain of the mild migraine that made him a little more prone to irritation he had since he had woken up in the med bay of the _Normandy_. He could have even blamed Shepard's sarcasm rubbing off on him, but that was too easy. He was politically savvy enough that he knew not to rise up to bait set out like that, yet he knew he was probably at his limits; worn out by the grueling ground battle, even with the badly needed rest, his injuries still healing, his implant giving him a migraine, Shepard unconscious and in surgery with no update from Chakwas yet…so many things – too many in his opinion – and now this political minefield waiting to be stepped on…

"Major Alenko gave his report to the Council hours ago and I can confirm that he does not know the whereabouts-"

"Nothing more than a pretender to the name Spectre, huh, _human_," the turian sneered, "even having our illustrious spokesperson here cover for you-"

"_Siona!_" Jondum's command was like an instant whiplash as she shut her mouth, her mandibles flaring apart before looking away.

"Sorry," Kaidan barely heard the muttered apology as she slouched against the wall of the conference room, looking for all the while a child pouting. He suspected that she was one of the many who still did not believe humanity belonged in the Spectres and brought their way to a Council seat, even after all Shepard had done to raise their profile in the galactic view. Still he understood that perhaps she was only lashing out because Palaven was close to falling and the Council had promised full support to drive out the Reapers from Earth. He would have been angry had their roles been reversed.

"Now," Jondum directed everyone's attention back to his projection, "the Council has been discussing options since we are not needed for future ground operations on Earth unless something drastic happens."

It had not occurred to Kaidan that included him too and he immediately wanted to protest, to say that he was staying where the fight was, here on Earth. That the only way he was going to go scout out other places was either with Shepard or if every single Reaper, husk, and indoctrinated human was freed. Crap, this is what Shepard had to deal with when she had been asked to investigate for the Council and also juggle her duties to the Systems Alliance at the same time. He had not realized the extent of her loyalties to both the Council and Alliance until now.

"As we know, if the coalition was to fracture now, then the Reapers will regain the upper hand and we won't be able to combat them on multiple front lines," the salarian explained, "I'll be bringing a proposal to the Council regarding our scouts, but we must determine which front to hit next. I know bias will play heavily into your reports and I don't blame you." He shrunk the projection a little and stared at all of them. Kaidan was struck at how serious and how empathetic the salarian was. He understood, even though perhaps some of the other Spectres in the room did not or refused to acknowledge that.

"These words should not come as a shock to all of you, but I think it bears repeating, now more than ever. You serve the Council. You were all chosen because you were the best of your military and of your race. The bias will be there, the urgent need to see your homeworld, your colony; your people not fall to the Reapers. You will want to say that Palaven should be next, or Thessia, or even Sur'Kesh," Jondum shut his omnitool off and clasped his hands behind him, "but think, just think for a moment. There are other homeworlds out there. Races, that have small military forces, races not on the Council. Races, that are clients, that are also suffering out there.

"The batarians? They have no home to go back to yet their ships are in orbit right now. They are fighting like us and they want to go back to their home, no matter how devastated it is," he pointed out of the window where the fiery debris of ships destroyed rotated slowly through space. Jondum shook his head, "You can blame the Council all you want, but all of us knew what Commander Shepard knew when Sovereign showed up three years ago. We are the Council's hand and we have a duty to protect everyone. No bias, nothing. We knew this war was coming and we tried to prepare for it as best as we could without being ostracized by our governments and military." The unspoken potential of being dismissed and ostracized by the Council was there, but everyone heard it.

Kaidan found himself nodding in agreement. Shepard was the scapegoat in this case, forced to destroy the batarian relay to prevent the Reapers from getting a head start in their invasion. Her vocal protests against the lack of preparation by both the Council and the more stubborn members of the Alliance Parliament made her a prime target to be kept under house arrest and the media painted her as a potential problem. But Admiral Hackett and Anderson both knew and both secretly prepared. Shepard's scapegoat status made the other Spectres prepare, made her friends go to their governments and prepare, secretly, silently.

"So like before, we now prepare. We gather information, resources, data. Anything to help us coordinate the next strike against the Reapers. We are the Council's arm even if they do not want to hear what we have to say," Jondum continued, "we are the Council and we are the protectors of the galaxy. Each one of you knows what it is to sacrifice everything you hold dear for that one strike. Some of us know more than the others…"

Kaidan saw the salarian's mouth droop a little and wondered what had happened to the Spectre before he seemingly shook himself out of the small funk. "So I call upon you, Spectres, to put aside your fears and your wishes. Whether Palaven or Thessia, whether it is Dekuuna or some other world, we must work together and strike fast, strike hard at the Reapers."

The salarian suddenly brought up his omnitool again and activated the projection once more, "You will all be assigned to groups of two or three. One species per group. Any bias you have towards each other, anything that will make you think that your homeworld has a greater need than your partner's must be buried. If it should be Thessia, then Thessia it is. If it is Palaven, then Palaven it is. I will bring this to the Council and you will receive your assignments in the next twenty-four hours."

He shut off the projection before bringing up the lights in the conference room, a clear dismissal. Kaidan watched as a few Spectres clustered around each other talking, hands waving or mandibles flaring as they each slowly filed out of the room. He breathed out a quiet sigh and made to follow the rest out before spotting Jondum waving to him. Curious as to what the salarian wanted with him, he approached the front only to see the turian female, Siona, he could not quite remember her last name, also going towards Jondum. Another male turian was next to her, and there was something familiar about him. He realized that it was the tribal markings on the turian's face, styled in the same color and markings like Garrus. He wasn't too good at identifying turians, but he could almost imagine the same visor hanging over the turian's left eye.

He caught Siona's expression souring into one of irritation as she also spotted him approaching Jondum, but ignored it. She could be as dismissive of him as all she wanted; he was determined to be as professional as possible after that little slip up earlier.

"Major, I know that the _Normandy_ is not your ship, but if you could pass on the word to Commander Shepard when she awakens from surgery…" Kaidan knew news spread quickly, especially about Shepard, but even he was surprised that Jondum knew that she was in surgery. He supposed that the rumors of her large-than-life persona preceded her. He remembered when Shepard had confessed feeling a little scared after learning that almost every single soldier down on Earth wanted scraps of information regarding her efforts and the _Normandy's_ efforts to secure alliances. She did not know if she was going to live up to expectations and even said that she considered herself a simple soldier instead of the larger-than-life image everyone tried to paint her with.

"But I am assigning Siona Fedorian and Revak Vakarian to the _Normandy_-"

"What? But-"

"Both will be useful," Jondum overrode Siona's protest with both a steely glare and slight rise of his voice, "and provide extra support for the crew members that have been recently lost in the battle."

Kaidan frowned, "Not that I don't appreciate it, but how did you know? Admiral Hackett only spoke to me hours ago regarding the crew members lost on the _Normandy_ and having barely anyone to spare a transfer-"

"Admiral Hackett was the one who approached me," the corners of the salarian's wide lips turned up in a slight smile, "and it would be beneficial. The _Normandy_ is an advance scout ship and would be able to get in and out of the critical systems and clusters that we need information from if no other Spectre would be able to reach it in time."

Kaidan wondered if Hackett and Jondum knew something he did not…especially with the two turians' postings. For all he knew, Shepard could be transferred off of the _Normandy_ and to a more permanent medical facility and the ship would have gotten a new commanding officer. Granted if that scenario played out, he would have immediately requested a transfer off of the ship, wanting to stay close to Shepard's side. But maybe Hackett had gotten information that suggested Shepard was out of surgery or soon to be out of it. That made him a little happier and he latched onto that hope.

"I'll have to clear it with the Admiral himself and also Commander Shepard when she's awake," he nodded diplomatically and Jondum inclined his head.

"Of course, I understand," the salarian said before gesturing for Siona to follow him for a more private conversation.

That left Kaidan with the other turian and he gave him a once over. "Vakarian? Any relation to Garrus Vakarian?"

"A younger cousin," the turian shrugged, seemingly bored and uninterested, "always heard he was a hot-head; was considered a disgrace to the Vakarian family name, quitting C-Sec and all to chase after Saren. But, I do have to give him credit for giving us a little bit of time to prepare before the Reapers hit. Mind you, that's probably the only credit he gets."

"Ah," Kaidan wondered if Revak knew that Garrus was currently serving aboard the _Normandy_, but decided against telling him in case it brought up all sorts of issues. He would have to find Garrus before Revak or Siona boarded the ship and ask him if he knew them and probably give him a heads up that they were now assigned to the ship under both Council and Hackett's authorities. He glanced over the turian's shoulder to see Siona fold her arms across her chest before reluctantly nodding to Jondum's words, her irritated expression melting into one of professional respect. He wondered what the salarian was saying to diffuse her irritation, perhaps her orders once she was aboard the _Normandy_.

He had no doubt that both Revak and Siona would have separate orders from his and Shepard's goals, but at least knew that Jondum would not betray or have their orders conflict with the running of the ship. The salarian Spectre knew the stakes so perhaps Siona and Revak's orders were in conjunction with their posting, otherwise why would Hackett approve of it. Nilihus' posting to the _Normandy_ under the pretense of overseeing the ship's maiden voyage three years ago proved that Spectres had other orders that went with the official ones.

Jondum finished his conversation with Siona and the two saluted each other before she returned, her expression, from how ever much he could read into turian facial expressions, a neutral one. "When the orders are processed through, the _Normandy_ is currently located planet-side. I'll send a shuttle for the two of you, but consider yourselves on leave for now."

He would have expected a little more scoffing at, essentially, what was an order that issued from his mouth, but he guessed that turians really respected their military hierarchy as both saluted him. He returned the salute before the two left the room, leaving him standing there to ponder the odd turn of events.

* * *

><p>Kaidan's first order of business after returning to the <em>Normandy<em> was to link straight up with Admiral Hackett even though he wanted to check on Shepard in the ship's med bay. The armed guards he had seen earlier had rotated their posts and some of the crew members he saw on the bridge repairing the ship had told him that no one was allowed near the place under Chakwas' orders.

So it was an hour later after returning from the _Destiny Ascension_ that he found himself linked through the quantum entanglement communicator to Admiral Hackett. The Admiral had returned to his ship after meeting with the Council to continue to coordinate with Major Coates of the ground forces and the fleets in orbit around Earth. The official word was that Admiral Anderson was MIA and while ground teams were searching the area near the Conduit, they had not been able to find the body. Major Coates had been put in charge of all ground forces and whatever was left of the Resistance and Kaidan suspected that the Major would probably be inheriting Anderson's position instead of waiting for one of the other Rear Admirals who had survived the space battle to coordinate ground forces.

"Major, I presume your meeting went well," the Admiral greeted him and Kaidan nodded.

"Yes sir," he replied, "didn't realize how many, or rather, how few Spectres there really were. Some are still deployed throughout the galaxy, gathering intel reports and that sort."

"I will be clearing Spectres Siona Fedorian and Revak Vakarian's transfers to the _Normandy_ in short order," the Admiral did not apologize for springing the sudden transfer upon him nor was Kaidan too much of a professional to question Hackett's orders. He wondered when he had become the unofficial executive officer aboard the _Normandy_. It was a job that he did not mind doing, but if Hackett or anyone got any ideas that he was going to assume command of what was considered Shepard's ship, then they would receive a flat no from him. Even though, he technically outranked Shepard, he still valiantly believed that the _Normandy_ was hers. He knew that other highly decorated officers would not hesitate to take advantage of the 'hole' left in wake of her grievous injuries.

"Sir, I presume we have orders then?" he clasped his hands behind him in perfect parade rest.

"Yes," Hackett scratched his goatee, "we've received an emergency transmission from the local resistance group in Chicago about a package that they've discovered. The transmission was garbled, but it said something about indoctrination and potential cure."

"Chicago's had a heavy concentration of Reaper forces haven't they? It was considered a priority target after London, right?' Kaidan vaguely remember reading the briefings before they launched their mission in London.

"Yes," Hackett nodded, "and they've been having some Reaper trouble of their own. I've been sending a few teams there, but everyone's stretched thin and I won't consider an orbital bombardment unless it is absolutely necessary."

"Understood sir," he shifted his stance a little, "sir, what about Commander Shepard?"

"This will be your op, Major," Hackett's face looked like it could be carved from stone, "I will allow the Commander to recuperate aboard the _Normandy_, but I need the _Normandy_ and her crew to pick the package up before Reaper forces overrun the resistance and deliver it back to London."

"Yes sir," Kaidan was a little afraid Hackett was going to say that. He was used to leading operations, but at least the saving grace was that the _Normandy_ wouldn't put too much of a fuss up if Shepard was still here and they needed to follow him instead.

"Alenko," Hackett seemed to have picked up his discomfort and his face softened a little, "this is still Shepard's ship. She is still in charge. You're just doing what any second-in-command and fellow Spectre would do in this case."

Kaidan blinked, a little shocked before feeling some heat rise up in his face, "Sir, I didn't meant to imply-er, uh, I'm sorry sir. It won't happen again."

The Admiral shook his head, "We've all been through hell in the past forty-eight hours. The crew and most definitely Shepard when she wakes up, will understand."

"Yes sir."

"Now," Hackett resumed a more formal tone, "regarding the two turian Spectres' orders. They will help you secure the package and deliver the necessary data to the Council. Siona and Revak are considered the best infiltrators in the Spectres and can easily get in and out of an enemy hot zone, probably on par with Jondum Bau himself as an infiltrator if not better."

"Sir, is the package a person we're picking up?" he asked.

"Yes," Hackett replied but made no other comment regarding who or what species the person was. Kaidan had a feeling that the 'package' was human, but then again, for all he knew, it could be a fellow salarian or even an asari or turian. Maybe that was why the two turians had been assigned to the _Normandy_. Though aliens were a minority on Earth, he knew that there were a few species who had migrated to the planet to live there, some liking human culture, others for more business purposes.

"Your contact will be Commander Hale Shaw," Hackett continued and Kaidan froze in surprise, his jaw dropping open a little bit.

"Shaw? Hale Shaw?" he could not believe it.

A smile crept up on Hackett's face, "I was sure that you would like the news. Your second-in-command of your biotic division is leading the Chicago resistance and actually sent us the emergency transmission. Anderson had told me that you had put them in touch with the main group a couple of months back after finding them."

"Good to hear that he's still alive," he wondered if the rest of J-Squad was still alive. Knowing Shaw, the man probably did keep the rest of the squad alive; he had been as stubborn and as cautious as ever. High command had thought he was too cautious, but Kaidan had seen that it wasn't caution, but rather careful planning that made Shaw keep his men alive and nearly have a no-loss mark on his record.

The Admiral nodded, "You have your orders Major. Hackett out." His image dissolved out, leaving Kaidan alone in the communication room. He sighed slowly and deeply before closing his eyes. Centering himself, he opened them again and squared his shoulders back. He could do this, he could lead Shepard's squad into combat and back. He had done it so many times before, so why did he feel like something was going to go horribly wrong. _Nerves Alenko, just nothing to worry about_, he reassured himself before heading out of the room and back towards the command deck.

It was only after he passed through the security barrier that he realized he should probably talk to Garrus first before Siona and Revak arrived. He wanted to check on Shepard, to talk to her even though she probably could not hear him, to make sure she was all right. But first things first, warn Garrus, make sure the crew was back on the ship before heading out. There would be time en route to check on Shepard.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes:<strong>

The chapter's title refers to the Spectres and also Two Steps From Hell's awesome music. Bioware used a majority of their tracks for their various trailers and I've decided to use a few of them for my chapter titles.


	7. Chapter 6: Sancta Terra

Mass Effect 3: Leaving Earth

By: Shadow Chaser

**Disclaimer:**

Mass Effect does not belong to me; it belongs to Bioware, EA, Casey Hudson, and its writers. Commander Shepard, however, sort of belongs to me – after all, I created her and personalized her (at least I wish I can claim to own her, it's all Bioware's writing so I sort of claim her).

**Story:**

* * *

><p><em>Chapter 6 – Sancta Terra<em>

Kaidan was pretty sure that every single species' reaction to surprise was universal. Slight jaw dropped, eyes wide and most definitely the body stilling in reaction to the news. The mandibles parting was just another addition to the jaw dropping in his opinion as Garrus stared back at him from the weapons bench he had been hunched over at in his usual spot near the forward guns. He also realized this was probably the first time he had ever seen Garrus surprised. He had always thought of the turian as a cool, friendly, if somewhat darkly humorous fellow crewmate; intensely loyal, but also capable of leadership when the need arose. He also had thought that the turian would never be surprised.

Apparently Kaidan's assumptions were wrong.

"Siona and Revak," the turian's jaws closed as he stroked a mandible thoughtfully, "well, there's a pairing I would have never expected."

"You know them?" he asked as he shifted his feet a little. He had put an all-hands alert out for the rest of the _Normandy's_ crew that had either been on short shore leave or had decided to help out with clean-up and patrol in London. Most of the crew members had reported in that they were on their way back. Those that did not report in, which were only one or two in number, were found to have been either severely wounded or dead since the aftermath of the battle. The two Spectres were due to arrive within the hour and as soon as they did, the _Normandy_ would take-off to Chicago.

"Well…I can't really say anything bad about them since they're Spectres-"

"Uh huh…" Kaidan crossed his arms in a perfect reminder to the turian that he too was now a Spectre.

"You and Shepard don't count. Well, you may, since you can kill me with your mind-"

"And Shepard can't?"

"Oh, I didn't say she can't. Her biotics aren't suited for defensive barriers, more like an offensive one so a simple sniper bullet would do," Garrus shrugged and for a moment Kaidan wondered if the turian was completely serious, but then realized that Garrus was both joking and being serious. It was a little…unsettling to say the least. He wondered if Shepard knew about that, but reasoned that she probably did, considering that she trusted Garrus with her life.

"But back to those two," the turian coughed a little, as if realizing that was probably not the most diplomatic thing to say, especially to Kaidan. "Yeah, I know them. Siona I know from my days back in the military before C-Sec. She and I…had a kind of rivalry going on, a small quibble regarding flexibility and reach in relation to hand-to-hand combat, nothing big."

"Okay," Kaidan had a feeling he was missing something, but did not dwell on it, "so she's not going to be a problem?"

"Well, I hope not," Garrus replied before his eyes shifted to the side, "she is the daughter of the previous Primarch."

"…Shit…" it dawned on him why her last name sounded familiar and wondered why he had not put together two and two to make four when he was at the Spectre meeting. Fedorian… From the reports he had read regarding Shepard's mission to Menae, Palaven's largest moon, the Primarch had died an hour before the _Normandy_ arrived, a last desperate attempt by the Primarch to escape the moon and get to the summit.

"Yeah," Garrus nodded, "I didn't want to mention it to Shepard, but there were more than a few turians who thought we could have arrived earlier, could have done something to save Fedorian. I mean, we do have a clear sense of hierarchy, but there are always favorites in terms of politicians. Victus just happened to be lucky that most of our military will follow him, even if they consider him a maverick. Fedorian, well, he knew how to wow a crowd and also get the military behind him."

"And now Siona Fedorian's getting posted to the ship that she thought could have arrived earlier to save her father," Kaidan shook his head, "great, just…great." Jondum must have known and deliberately made sure that she had been posted to the _Normandy_. Hell, even Admiral Hackett must have known.

"I'll keep an eye on her, don't worry," Garrus reassured him and Kaidan smiled a little.

"Thanks, I appreciate it. I don't want her getting anywhere near the med bay too."

"Understood," the turian replied, "oh, but just letting you know, keep Revak away from me."

"Your cousin?"

"He told you that?" the turian seemed a little surprised, "wow…he actually said 'cousin'?"

"He's not your cousin?"

"Oh, he is," the turian gave a very human sigh and fiddled with a dial on the inactive rifle, "just, he and the rest of the family line, probably the exception now being my father and sister, have all but denied me family rights."

"Well…he didn't really say anything nice after that cousin bit," Kaidan supplied, "seemed to think that you were a disgrace to the Vakarian line, but gave you credit for prepping against the Reapers."

"Huh…" Garrus seemed to contemplate something before shaking his head a little, "more than likely setting me up for something though."

"Will he be a problem?"

"Not a problem Major," the turian seemed to shake something off before looking up at him, "just, if you can, keep him away from me or at least make sure I'm not able to talk to him."

"Gun calibrations?"

Garrus gave him a look, "You've been hanging out too much with Shepard."

Kaidan had to laugh a little at the humorous, but slightly sour look the turian had on his face, "At least it's not Mako calibrations."

Garrus laughed, "True. But thanks Major, I really appreciate you coming down here and letting me know. Most people, even friends, wouldn't really do that sort of thing."

"No problem," Kaidan easily replied, "just be ready in a couple of hours. We're heading to Chicago to pick up a package that may help the scientists here trying to break the indoctrination."

"I'll be ready," the turian replied before turning back to his rifle and Kaidan headed out of the forward battery.

He glanced over to the darkened windows of med bay and the guards that stood in front of the door, armed to the teeth. Since he had gotten off of the line with Admiral Hackett, he thought that the surgery would have been finished, but it looked like it was not. That worried him as it meant that Shepard's injuries were far more grievous than what he had seen. He considered knocking on the med bay doors and informing Dr. Chakwas that they were headed to Chicago on a mission, but decided that perhaps EDI could notify her, incase she was in a delicate operation or something.

However, before he could even reach the elevator to take him back up to the CIC, he saw the doors to the med bay open and the good doctor herself step out, looking a little more than weary. She immediately spotted him and stepped forward just as he stepped towards her. The doors closed behind her before he could catch a glimpse of Shepard within and she neatly blocked his path with a hand held up.

"Major, I was just coming to see you-"

"Is she all right?" Kaidan asked, discreetly stepping to the side and away from some of the more curious eyes and ears of the crew members who were in the midst of returning to the ship and getting their gear stowed in the lockers. More than one headed in and out of the crew quarters off of the elevator, but he noticed that some of the had deliberately slowed their paces as they spotted the doctor, no doubt hoping for some information regarding Shepard.

A quick glare from him sent them scurrying away and a few hasty salutes directed at him that he acknowledged with the barest nods of his head. He did not need the crew to start rumors all over the ship and potentially have it go off ship before they headed to Chicago.

Chakwas nodded, lowering her voice so that they could keep this conversation more private. "There's been extensive damage to her body and I am sure you know about her cybernetics."

Kaidan nodded once. When Shepard had showed him what Cerberus had put into her to rebuild her, Dr. Chakwas had insisted that he read her records in the med bay instead of taking them elsewhere. He understood the caution, there were too many enemies out there, both political and military that wanted nothing more than to either condemn Shepard as a Cerberus spy or potentially kill her just so they could take her apart to see how Cerberus' Lazarus Project had been completed.

He had to admit, reading about her cybernetics had been…disturbing to say the least. But that was the past and he trusted Shepard with every fiber of his being. She was still Shepard, still the woman he loved and would always stay by her side, no matter what happened.

"It will not be pretty, but surgery never is," Chakwas continued, "she'll have some scarring again, but her health implants and continual positive outlook should clear those up."

"Stress won't affect her healing?" They both knew how much stress Shepard had been under and Kaidan had been a little disappointed that even he could not banish the bad memories and nightmares she had been having. He supposed the only solace he could give her was a shoulder for her to lean on and someone to be there for her. Perhaps, in time, he would be able to make her forget her problems, even if it was just one night.

"That remains to be seen," Chakwas shrugged, "she's never been under this much pressure, not even when she had assaulted the Collector base."

Kaidan made a non-committal noise to her statement. Though he felt like he had been through several wringers after he had seen her alive and well on Horizon, a part of him still wished he had joined her crew and had been there to help her on her suicide mission. To call it anything else but that was a joke in his opinion. He still could not believe that she had such a bleak outlook, but understood what had been at stake.

"EDI's already informed me that Admiral Hackett has a mission for us?"

"Yeah," he crossed his arms, "Chicago. We're picking up a high-level intel personnel. Hackett's sent in several teams, but my guess is that their extraction process went south and we're able to at least stealth closely in without being noticed."

"But we're more than likely to have wounded," Chakwas pursed her lips, "I'll get the rest of the med bay ready, Major."

"Thank you," Kaidan smiled a little. He loved working with Chakwas; the woman was smart and always thinking on her feet.

"Now then," Chakwas suddenly eyed him with a critical look, "I think a few painkillers would do you good, or at least blunt the migraine you have right now. I would recommend sleep and a dark sunglass until your migraine goes away, but that's not going to happen is it?"

Kaidan blinked, surprised. He had all but forgotten about his dull migraine even though he could clearly feel the pain and pressure. He had pushed it aside like all of the other times he had been too busy or had too many things to do. He knew it would eventually come back and bite him in the ass, but the fact that Chakwas had picked up on it surprised him.

"You always had a little crease around your eyes whenever a migraine was bothering you and you hadn't done anything about it," the doctor smiled wirily before gesturing for him to follow her into the med bay.

"You can tell?"

"I always make it a point to find out certain things about certain people who have a certain habit of not complaining or getting the medical attention they should be getting even if they're severely discomforted or injured," the doctor replied as they walked in. Kaidan grimaced a little, knowing that comment was direct at him. While he would freely admit his L2 implants gave him the occasional migraine, he always emphasized to his commanding officers that he was functional when he was needed or when push came to shove. He always prided himself as dependable, even if his head felt like it was going to split into two.

The only time he remembered confessing about his migraines was after the mission on Noveria where he had felt like he was throwing every single ounce of eezo in his body to combat Matriarch Benezia's asari commandos. And that confession had been in a moment where he had allowed his carefully guarded feelings for Shepard to come forth. They had been toying with the fine line of fraternization, but that mission had seemingly opened an emotional scar in Shepard that he could not help but try to relate to her. He supposed that it was because she had tried to comfort Liara regarding Benezia's fate, but had also felt helpless to do anything about it.

It seemed like Shepard had taken his confession and let Chakwas know about it. And speaking of her, he glanced towards where he had last seen her, only to see three privacy curtains drawn about the med bay. Two were in the back near the A.I. core, the soldiers that had carried her in from the hanger bay still probably there with two nurses checking on those patients. The other curtain was drawn around Shepard's bed. However, he saw a faint curvy outline of someone standing by the bed, omnitool lit.

"Ms. Lawson is keeping an eye on her vitals," Chakwas noticed his gaze as she pulled out an empty syringe and a small vial before drawing its contents. "I know how you feel about her Kaidan, but Miranda has been invaluable with her knowledge of the Lazarus Project."

"Yeah…"

"Here," he looked at her and held out his arm as she tied a quick tourniquet around his upper arm and tapped the crook of his elbow gently to find a vein. As soon as she found one, she injected the contents and Kaidan immediately felt the gnawing dull pain go away. Chakwas finished up and released his arm before giving him a cotton ball to hold over the injection site. He did so and flexed his elbow back and forth to speed the natural healing augments every military personnel had gotten when they first joined the armed services.

"It won't last forever and you'll probably feel worst coming off of the painkillers, but they will do their job for the next several hours."

"I suppose peeking in on Shepard is out of the question?" he asked quietly as not to disturb the others.

Chakwas smiled a little sadly and nodded, "I'm sorry Major. Miranda is currently running a decontamination protocol to make sure that there isn't any lingering infection from the operation or otherwise."

"Is that common?"

"With her cybernetics, it's needed," Chakwas looked a little uncomfortable, "otherwise there could be a chance of rejection."

"Oh," Kaidan wondered why Shepard had never mentioned any of this to him. Then again, perhaps Chakwas' words regarding certain people not telling certain things also applied to her. It would be like Shepard to be as stubborn as he was in seeking medical attention – she just happened to be a little sneakier and his commanding officer at the time.

"Don't worry. Her immune system is still working, it's just after such a major operation she needs a little boost, that's all."

"Okay," he nodded before throwing the cotton ball into the trash receptacle, "Keep me posted, all right? We should arrive in a couple of hours."

"Will do," Chakwas replied, saluting him as he returned the salute and headed out. At least he had somewhat of a peace of mind regarding Shepard and it was easier for him to now concentrate on the mission.

* * *

><p>Flying under the Reapers' radar meant a slightly longer trip than a quick high-orbit jet to Chicago. But Kaidan was already armored up and sitting in the co-pilot's chair to the right of Joker. It was where EDI usually sat; he still felt a little uncomfortable with the usage of the ship's A.I. in a body sitting when she was technically throughout the ship, but he supposed weirder things have happened. He would have stood behind Joker, but that was what Shepard did and that was her spot. He would never usurp her position on this ship, and besides, felt a lot more comfortable helping Joker with navigation and calculations, even though EDI was clearly the co-pilot of the <em>Normandy<em>.

"I've managed to send a tight beam transmission to Commander Shaw telling him to expect us, but I don't know if the Reapers have intercepted it or not," Joker said as Kaidan studied the radar with a critical eye. Admiral Hackett was not kidding when he said that the second-highest concentration of Reapers was in Chicago. The place looked like it was still crawling with Hades Cannons and even a few Destroyers. Luckily, he did not see any full Reaper ships in the mix and supposed that was a blessing that none were here. Still, the place was full of anti-aircraft mines, patrols of fighters, and all sorts of unsavory things.

It was a miracle that Commander Shaw managed to get a message out or rather even stay alive by the sheer amount of Reaper forces he had seen. At the same time, his wonderment was filled with a sense of pride for his second-in-command. J-Squad was one of the best of the ten-squad biotic division he commanded. That wasn't to say that the other nine squads weren't as good, it was if he knew that there was squad who would be able to hold the line, J-Squad was it.

"Well, the Hades Cannons haven't tracked us yet," he muttered, flicking over to another angle of images, "this is bad…"

"Major, I would recommend the _Normandy_ drop you off from the hanger bay instead of taking the other Kodiak shuttle," EDI's melodic voice spoke up, "and I apologize."

"For what?" Kaidan asked as he absently contemplated EDI's suggestion. She was certainly right; the air was too full of enemies without the great chance of having the Kodiak shot down. Lieutenant Cortez was a great pilot, but he did not want to risk the potential of having one of his crew shot down in Reaper-infested territory with no hope of rescue.

"For not being able to join you in this venture," EDI replied.

"EDI, you're injured-"

"But it is only the body-"

"Consider yourself injured in this respect and like any other soldier, take the time given to you to get better so that the next time we need you, you're one-hundred percent," from what Shepard had told him of her conversations with EDI, the A.I. was actually learning how to be more 'human' and it was rather heartening to hear disappointment and even frustration in EDI's voice. He still did not know what to make of the geth or any self-aware A.I., but he supposed that if Shepard truly brokered peace between the geth and quarians, then perhaps sentience in an artificial construct was possible and that they became more like organics. He didn't quite believe in God, having a firmer belief in some possible vague deity out there, but maybe they were beginning to figure out where life truly came from.

There was a moment of silence to the point where Kaidan glanced at Joker who shrugged before looking up at the speakers. The fact that Joker was staying silent through this whole exchange spoke volumes as to how the man felt about the conversation. Kaidan knew that the pilot and A.I. had a unique…relationship if one could call it, but generally Joker treated EDI as if she was very human and a person. He was letting her figure it out on her own instead of prompting her to learn the lesson that so many soldiers learned after their first injury on the front lines.

"Thank you, Major," EDI finally replied before her tone turned a bit more businesslike, "We're approaching LZ. Hades Cannons have not spotted us, but as soon as we hit ground level, they will start shooting."

"Thanks EDI," Kaidan replied as he got up, "stay in their blind spot and maintain comm. silence so they're not targeting you. We'll probably have to have the _Normandy_ do a hot pick up." EDI had speculated that many of the shuttles of Hammer group had been shot down due to Reaper forces using the Hades Cannons to target them through comm. chatter. It was an idea that he was hoping to forward to Hackett once this mission was over, but it would certainly explain why the Reapers were able to target them so accurately when they could not quite see the _Normandy's _stealth systems and the same stealth systems on the Kodiaks.

"Joker," he shook the man's chair briefly as he headed out of the cockpit and made his way down to the hangar bay where the rest of the crew were gearing up. The two turian Spectres were standing by a corner, checking their weaponry while openly staring at Javik who stood near them. Garrus, true to his word was on the opposite side, pretending to be utterly engaged in a conversation with Vega and Liara. Tali was standing near them, but was not going on the mission since she was still running a mild fever.

She had nearly protested his choice not to bring her, but at the end it had been Garrus who had told her that rushing out in a potential hot zone with her immune system compromised could kill her in the long run. The quarian was not happy, but had grudgingly accepted it as much and said she was instead going to help Cortez make sure the second Kodiak was ready to go in case they needed it.

Grabbing his trusty Phaeston and Carnifex pistol, he tapped his radio to check that it was working and received taps of acknowledgment back from the others before Joker's voice blared through, a little bit tinned, but otherwise clear.

"The LZ is clear for now," Joker said as the ship started to shake and rumble beneath his foot. He could feel a slight swooping sensation in his stomach as the _Normandy_ banked and the dull thumps of something hitting the hull told him that they were definitely being shot at.

"All right, fan out and find cover as soon as we touch down," he called out, just as he heard Joker's acknowledgment for him to lower the ramp and hit the button to lower the ramp.

Immediately a blast of acrid air, filled with the smell of metallic degradation and decay assaulted him, but Kaidan immediately charged forward into the inky night, lit only by the skies above and lights of Hades Cannons. He saw the others follow him before running towards a half-melted metallic structure and pushed himself up against the cover. Turning back, he waved a hand to Cortez who was holding a rifle, covering their six as he closed the ramp and the _Normandy _immediately took off, rolling once to narrowly avoid a blast from a nearby Hades Cannon.

"Everyone in one piece?" he shouted over the comm.

"Clear!" Garrus' and Siona's flanged replies was followed by a slight squeal over the comm. followed by a crackle and then a very familiar voice.

"Major, that you?"

Kaidan could not help but grin tightly. "Saving you, again," he replied good-naturedly, "where are you?" He peered out of cover, but could not see any sign of anyone in the vicinity.

A sudden blue biotic burst lit up the air near where they had landed and Kaidan tapped his radio twice in acknowledgment. He held up his right hand in a fist so that everyone could see before silently pointing in the direction of the biotic flare. Shaw's silent reply to his inquiry meant that he was in a compromising situation and could not talk over the comm. without risking whatever position he had.

He caught Garrus' eye and signaled for him to watch for enemy forces before pointing at Javik and told him to circle the other way. Javik was probably the second-best sniper on the squad, though he supposed Garrus was biased when he said he was the best. Kaidan wanted the two best eyes he knew making sure that there were no husks around to ambush them. It would be like a banshee to scream and announce its presence when it was too late to escape.

He knew he could have had Revak and Siona be his lookouts, but Kaidan did not know how they operated and so wanted them close to see what their strengths and weaknesses were. He had asked them, but also knew from experience that most of the time soldiers lied about their strengths and weaknesses and it was only under times of duress that one's capabilities were proven.

"Contact," Vega suddenly whispered over the comm. as Kaidan approached the burly man's position. His finger was sitting lightly on the trigger, but then relaxed as he stood up straighter to greet the red-headed man that wore a dusky grey-blue camouflaged armor as he approached them, his gun not quite pointed towards the ground, but also not hostile either.

"Major Alenko," Hale Shaw greeted him with a solemn nod before a crooked grin worked its way up his face.

"Commander Shaw," Kaidan replied, an equally crooked grin working its way up his face before signaling for the rest of his crew to crowd in as Shaw gestured for them to follow him.

"It's good to see you sir," Shaw was a few years younger, but a bright kid and at least went through part of the N-school training before Kaidan recruited him to become part of his biotic division. "We didn't know if the Admiral got our message, but since you're here, looks like things are looking up."

"What happened?" he asked as he nodded greetings to the rest of J-Squad and some of what looked like E-Squad milling around a hollowed out building that Shaw was leading them into. A few of them stood on lonely beams of metal, sniper rifles and guns at the ready, but more than one cheered at their arrival.

"We were out training on the Great Lakes, you know, search and rescue, diving stuff when the Reapers hit," Kaidan remembered sending the division out to train while he had been summoned to Vancouver to discuss the imminent Reaper threat, "decided to raise hell for the Reapers in here while evacuating as many civilians as we could." They rounded a corner and Kaidan stopped dead in his tracks, feeling someone bump into him before they stepped to the side, but even then Liara's gasp of surprise conveyed his own shock.

"Whoa…"

"Yeah…" Shaw sounded a little frustrated as looked at the small crowd, probably around fifteen, all of them civilians, all of them slowly standing up and looking at them as they stood there.

"We discovered the Reapers were using Chicago as some sort of hub, indoctrination, making husks, we don't know. All we know is that the Reapers are determined to keep people here," Shaw continued, "Admiral Anderson managed to coordinate a team sent here to find out information. We could have gone in, but as you can see, had to make sure the civilians were protected before any intel could be extracted. I sent B-Squad and E Squad as support with the intel team, but they ran into heavier resistance than we had anticipated and well…" He gestured vaguely to what was left of E-Squad milling about.

"And the intel team was presumed lost?"

"Yeah," the red-headed man grimaced a little, "never had this many losses on my record…"

"You did your best, Shaw," Kaidan clapped him gently on the shoulder and shook it, "don't beat yourself over it. If you start thinking of numbers in a war, then you're losing sight of your goals."

"Understood, Major," Shaw nodded, but managed to look a little less morose, "so I decided to do a full evac of the city and radioed in to Anderson that we were abandoning the city. That was just a few days ago, before we heard news that the coalition arrived. We've been searching the little pockets of areas that we knew Reapers were concentrating their forces in, trying to find people to make into husks and managed to get some out. I-Squad and G-Squad have all but been wiped out in the last major offensive and Admiral Hackett did send a couple of quarian transport ships our way, so most of the civilians that we know of have evacuated."

"Orbital bombardment?" Kaidan remembered Hackett saying that he did not want to risk orbital bombardment unless it was the last resort.

"Yeah. I radioed Hackett to prepare for that, since I couldn't raise Anderson on the comms-"

"He's presumed MIA," Kaidan supplied.

Shaw frowned, "Damn. That's really shitty; he was a good man too. Provided us with news of your efforts on the _Normandy_ whenever he talked to Commander Shepard. Most of us here Major, well, we imagined you were kicking Reaper ass and were actually kind of surprised that you managed to find us."

"It wasn't easy," Kaidan shrugged, "but I'm glad that I'm at least a morale booster, if not being here to toss a few people around with my brain."

Shaw laughed a little, "Plenty here for you to toss away, sir. Anyway, we were about to leave when I sent A and C-Squad and Lieutenant Delphiki out for one last sweep. She radioed in about several hours ago saying that she managed to find a member of the intel team that had been hiding out a few kilometers from here. Unfortunately that's also the same time the Hades Cannons started up and blasted our transports out of here."

"Admiral Hackett told me that there was a person that was a high priority target that had information regarding indoctrination and a potential cure."

Shaw shrugged, shaking his head, "That was the original mission parameters as far as I remember, so I don't really know if the person really got the information. I'm guessing probably so, since Delphiki's a smart girl and her radioing like that means that whoever had survived did get some needed intel. Her transmission was pretty garbled, but that's about what I made out."

"Where's D, F, and H-Squads?" he asked, looking around for the familiar hulking forms of the heavy-artillery squad that was D and H-Squads. F-Squad was affectionately known as the biotic engineers, capable of setting up turrets and other defensive options while D and H specialized in biotic-heavy offensive weaponry.

"With the civilians who are on their way to Zanesville, just an hour outside of Cleveland. They've taken to walking out of here since the transports blew up," Shaw replied before gesturing to the fifteen or so civilians still lingering about, "these were stragglers that Lieutenant Delphiki had sent before she was pinned down by Reaper forces." Kaidan noticed that most of the civilians were staring in open wonderment at the heavily armed aliens of his crew. Most of them were staring at Javik who all but ignored them, the irritation of being stared at clear on his face.

"Why Zanesville?"

"It's the nearest evacuation center outside the major cities that hasn't been hit by the Reapers. Though I did get a recent report from Cleveland saying that they won't be able to hold out much longer, I think that Zanesville will probably be next on the Reapers list. Hopefully Lieutenant Anjou will be able to hold out."

"Yeah," Kaidan nodded. It explained why there was no heavy artillery set up around the campsite and why there was the barest of crew here. They had almost finished up except for what Lieutenant Delphiki had found. He cleared his throat and looked around at the civilians, "We'll have to do something about them…"

"Hey Major, if you're thinking of doing the hot zone pick up where Lieutenant Delphiki is, it's definitely guarded by at least two Hades Cannons. I can do a hot zone pick up with no sweat, but if you want to at least fly out of here, those things need to be disabled," Joker's voice suddenly crackled over the comm.

"Got it Joker," Kaidan replied, earning him a curious look from Commander Shaw. "Here, let me patch you in," he tapped his omnitool, connecting the rest of J and E-Squads to their frequency. "EDI, set an encryption level so that the Reapers don't pinpoint us."

"On it," her smooth voice replied.

"Encryption? You've got a specialist who can bypass the Reaper's frequency?"

"Sort of," Kaidan didn't want to say anymore, even though this was his division. "she's really good."

"Whatever you say sir," Shaw didn't look too convinced, but neither did he press the issue. "So about the civilians…"

"Joker, can you set the Normandy down for a few minutes so that we can evacuate some civilians onto the ship?"

"Probably…Tali and EDI are trying to jam the Reaper signal around the LZ right now, so we may have a chance," the pilot sounded a little distracted and Kaidan looked up to see flashes of lights where distant Hades Cannons were firing up into the air.

"We'll have to chance it," he decided, "Shaw; I want E-Squad to guard the civilians on their run to the _Normandy_ while we head to Delphiki's position."

"Yes sir," Shaw immediately straightened, but did not salute. Combat heavy zones required that no junior officer salute a senior one lest risk exposing the leaders to fire from the enemy. He turned and began to bark orders as Kaidan followed behind, gesturing to the rest of the _Normandy's_ crew to prep to head out. The civilians were spurred into moving back towards where they had entered and he saw Shaw stop one of E-Squad, a junior lieutenant and say a few words before she nodded and headed towards the civilians.

"All right everyone, let's move out!"

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes:<strong>

In-game Kaidan doesn't have the throw ability, but a Shepard-Sentinel class does. I've decided to use all of Shepard's classes' powers and apply it to the rest of the characters in their respective classes.


	8. Chapter 7: Archangel

Mass Effect 3: Leaving Earth

By: Shadow Chaser

**Disclaimer:**

Mass Effect does not belong to me; it belongs to Bioware, EA, Casey Hudson, and its writers. Commander Shepard, however, sort of belongs to me – after all, I created her and personalized her (at least I wish I can claim to own her, it's all Bioware's writing so I sort of claim her).

**Story:**

* * *

><p><em>Chapter 7 – Archangel<em>

Garrus scanned the fields of rubble and smoke with a sharp eye and determined that there were no immediate threats. He made the universal signal that all was clear before peering through his scope again. At least if there was one thing that all of the Council species and those not on the Council had learned was that some hand signals were common. A closed fist held up quickly for halt, open palm for wait, other signals for detonation of certain explosives, et cetera. He had noticed that Alenko had used several signals he did not recognize, but his biotics division had responded with instant action. Lieutenant Vega had even a puzzled expression on his face which further cemented his theory that it was a biotics-only type of signal and more specific, towards Alenko's squad.

He had not been surprised to find out that the Major had been put in charge of a front-line special ops biotic division before the Reapers invaded. Alenko had always been a good soldier and had blossomed into a capable leader under Shepard's tutelage. The fact that his promotion to Major, as far as Garrus knew in terms of human military, meant that Admiral Hackett and the others saw a leader within him. But the fact that Alenko was willing to relinquish the demands of his rank and place himself under Shepard's command once again told him that he was humble enough not to let that newfound power to go this head.

Garrus liked to think that also applied to himself, considering how far up the chain he was in relation to becoming Primarch of his people as a whole. He had brushed Shepard's question about how far up the chain of command he was by making light of it, but truth be told, he was scared shitless. Shepard had nearly hit the nail on the head, as humans liked to say, with him potentially becoming Primarch should anything befall Victus.

And he blamed Fedorian for all of that. The Vakarian family was always close to the ruling Primarch, no matter what line it was, but they had never had a family member become Primarch. It was because the Vakarian family liked working in the shadows, close to the Primarch to make things happen, but far enough to make sure that the occasional political instability that happened with some Primarchs did not mar their family name. When the previous Primarch had allocated the spare funds to set up his Reaper task force, it had come with strings attached and a promotion to third in-line, after Adrien Victus.

Garrus hated that.

He knew he could never be as good of a leader as Shepard; especially considering that he lost his whole damn squad on Omega nearly a year ago and hated making decisions. When Victus had asked for his suggestion regarding abandoning Palaven, he had nearly tore a mandible out making the final decision to pull back all forces and save them for the Crucible. It didn't help that he had learned moments before that his father and sister had made it off safely. One could look at that and call it favoritism, which was heavily frowned upon in their society.

Turian society did not have any so-called 'noble' family as it were when he had been learning about human culture and history. Granted, the humans rarely had anymore 'noble' families left in this day and age, there were still families with a lot of power and influence. If he had to make a comparison, the Vakarian family was probably close to that whole 'nobility' concept the humans seem to both have a disdain and respect for. Revak, his cousin was probably proof of that, being part of the Spectres and all.

He had long supposed that was why his father disliked Spectres so much, because of the seemingly unlimited authority Revak possessed and occasionally wielded to run roughshod over some of C-Sec's investigatons. Garrus, on the other hand, liked the Spectres' unlimited authority and Shepard was definite proof that not all Spectres were renegades who got the job done by any means necessary. Still, it didn't mean that he liked his cousin. It was quite the opposite. If the elder Vakarian and him had to agree on one thing, it was that Revak was definitely a loose cannon.

But there was nothing they could do – Revak brought the Vakarian family name into even more power and even more influence and perhaps it was part of that influence that made the elder Vakarian plead the case for Garrus to get a special Reaper task force – he did not really know. But the main thing was that Revak also got results.

"Garrus contacts?" Alenko's voice broke through Garrus' thoughts as he peered through his scope, scanning the immediate area.

"None so far," he replied back quietly, pausing his scope on the distant forms of Revak and Siona who were up in a different sniper perch, "you can advance to the next point."

"Roger that," Alenko replied before he saw an armored hand appear from a rubble pile, making several motions before quiet shuffles near Garrus told him that the others were moving.

He continued to move his scope, checking the area to make sure that it was all clear before lifting the scope away from his eye and stood up in a half-crouch. There was no need to stand all the way up if he was going to crab-walk to the next perch. No need to present a huge target that said 'shoot me, I'm here!' to any Reaper forces hidden in the skeletons of buildings.

He was not surprised that Siona was in the Spectres; she was a very competent soldier and perhaps more well regarded than her father even though he had been the Primarch. This was the case where the offspring outshone the parent and it proved that whoever had promoted and sponsored Siona into the Spectres had the right idea. Though he had been quite surprised to see her with his cousin, he also realized that she probably saw him differently than Garrus saw his cousin.

Still, it had been good to see her again, even though he barely had the chance to talk to her. It wasn't that he did not get the chance in the short flight to Chicago from London, it was the fact that she was always near Revak and Garrus did not want anything to do with his cousin. He wondered if she still remembered him and the days that they had spent at the military academy back on Palaven, testing both their reach and flexibility, not only in the sparring ring, but elsewhere.

Garrus shook himself off of the thoughts before arriving at the next sniper perch, tapping the comm. to indicate that both Siona and Revak could proceed to the next one. They were the vanguard, a very harmonious spotter-sniper pair that Major Alenko had been quick to utilize to give them some cover. As long as he did not have to talk to Revak, he would act in a professional manner, especially when Reapers were concerned.

"I see the two Hades Cannons," Siona's smooth voice broke through the comm., "definitely at least two marauders by cannon one. Setting HUD markers."

Garrus' eye piece lit up with two new feeds of information as he peered through his scope to where the markers were indicated. They were silent, but he knew that as soon as the _Normandy_ got in range, the cannons would activate and start firing its low humming pulse. It set his mandibles on edge and rattled the area if the cannons were like anything that they had tried to disable after the shuttle carrying the heavy weapons had been downed in London.

"Major, possible movement ten o'clock from where you are," Revak's guttural voice broke through the comm. and Garrus immediately swung his scope towards the directed position.

He frowned as he spotted the barest shadow of movement against the inky darkness of the night. The moonlight and distant flashes of things being shot into the air as the _Normandy_ flew around made it a little harder for him to adjust his scope's settings, but he definitely did see a shadow – there!

"Two marauders-," he started to say before Siona's frantic voice broke over the comm.

"Garrus _move_!"

Garrus rolled himself out of his sniper's perch and fell as he instantly obeyed Siona's order. As he landed heavily onto the rubble pile below his perch, he looked up in time to see that a banshee had almost skewered him and his eyes grew wide at the sight. But there was no time to ponder the situation as he suddenly ducked and rolled some more, his armor creaking as he holstered his sniper rifle and drew out his assault rifle as the area suddenly exploded into a battlefield.

The all-terrifying screech of the banshee reverberated through the air as Garrus heard Alenko and the others bark orders over the comm. as he made his way towards them, ducking and occasionally firing back at the sudden ambush they had walked into.

"Take the banshee down!" he glanced once behind him at Alenko's order and fired several bullets into the ugly twisted asari as it slowly leapt down from where it had unsuccessfully ambushed him. It smiled a death's head smile at him, raising its elongated arm, the pulsing blue glow of biotics ready to be unleashed-

And Garrus suddenly found himself thrown against a pile of rocks as the banshee suddenly exploded from the force of a missile impacting it. He blinked owlishly as his ears rattled with the force of the sound and staggered, feeling suddenly very dizzy and nauseous. Something grabbed him by the arm and he made to claw at it when two Commander Shaws spoke at him. He couldn't hear what the Commander was saying above the ringing in his ears and shook his head before feeling the tug of his arm and stumbled a few steps as he let the human biotic drag him away.

* * *

><p>Kaidan's feet pounded hard against the rubble-strewn ground as he sprinted for the safety of the makeshift supermarket that Lieutenant Delphiki and her team had been trapped in. He occasionally turned behind him to either toss a cannibal out of the way from the line of pursuit or to fire haphazardly at the incoming Reaper forces. Several missiles flew from launchers that came from the supermarket as Delphiki and her team covered their mad dash to safety. A quick glance to his right told him that Shaw and another one of J-Squad's biotics were leading Garrus to safety, the turian looking a little dizzied and confused as he stumbled after him. The turian probably did not even know he was bleeding from both ear drums and that his suit had a nasty gash across his chestpiece that was also bleeding. If it had not been for Siona's frantic warning, they would have never noticed the banshee silently approaching and about to ambush Garrus before perhaps moving on to taking out Javik and Vega who were the rear guard.<p>

He ducked and weaved through the piles of rubble as small pinging sounds told him how close bullets were to his head and involuntarily rolled as he felt a grenade pass near his head only to explode and send a shower of dirt and rocks against him. The force of the explosion pushed him a little to the left, but he managed to throw up a free hand to ward off several bullets that had been tracking towards him and fired back.

The screams of missiles and grenades mingled with far-off distant cries of brutes and other husks spurred him to go faster as he looked to his left and right to make sure the rest of his team were close and not being cut off by the Reapers. He knew that they were being herded towards where Lieutenant Delphiki and whatever remained of her squad were at the supermarket, but there was no other choice. Sitting out here meant ambushes and eventual death. They needed cover.

He saw one of Shaw's biotics stumble a bit before tossing off a lift-throw to two cannibals that got too close, but before he could help the biotic, the woman suddenly fell to the ground, instantly shredded by bullets. Kaidan immediately pinpointed the source of the bullet and fired several rounds of his rifle towards the marauder. The husk staggered under his bullet fire before someone else biotically slammed him into a nearby wall and twisted the husk's neck. The dark energy came from Javik who unceremoniously picked up the dead squad member's body, slinging it over his shoulder and ran on without a second's pause.

Kaidan immediately made to cover Javik's back as he nodded to Vega who had moved to cover both Shaw and the other J-Squad member who was helping him carry Garrus to safety.

"We need a plan!" Vega shouted to him as the two of them slowed a little to cover their teammates. He heard the crack of two sniper shots before catching glimpses of both Siona and Revak leaping down from high perches to join the others on the last hundred or so meters of open space before the hollowed out walls of the supermarket loomed before them. He spotted at least two people holding missile launchers gesturing frantically for them to hurry it up.

"I'll toss, you carnage," Kaidan shouted back before holding up three fingers as Vega nodded, setting his assault rifle to a special setting. A quick glance behind him and he instantly memorized the enemy forces closest to them before he turned back around, huffing out a quick breath and mentally steeling him. It was something he almost never did, but knew that in this case, it was the only way to give them some breathing room.

"Three," he called out, seeing that most of the team had almost made it into the dark confines of the supermarket, "two…"

"One!" he spun, immediately holstering his assault rifle while at the same time, mnemonically sending a biotic surge with his hands outstretched in a wave to push the Reaper forces away from them. A surge of dark energy poured from him as he felt the sharp spike of pain from his implant trying to compensate for the most powerful throw he had ever used.

The wave traveled so fast that Kaidan saw several husks thrown out of cover, tossed high into the air before they were shredded by the red firey carnage blasts from Vega. Even before the last one electronically screamed its dying breath he turned and ran the last few meters to the supermarket as two missiles streaked out and covered his and Vega's run.

Finally Kaidan stumbled into the confines of the hollowed out supermarket as the distant cries of several banshees wailed in the air, but the suppressing fire of the missiles did their job and deterred the Reaper forces from coming any closer. Vega laughed as he clapped him roughly on the back and he had to grin at the feeling of being so alive after what they had both did. However, his laughter turned into a wince of pain as he felt his migraine return full force and squeezed his eyes shut. He supposed using his powers like that completely overrode whatever pain suppressants Dr. Chakwas had given to him earlier.

"Here you go sir," a distant voice that sounded a little too loud at the same time made him stagger a little as he blearily opened his eyes to see doubles of someone holding up a hypodermic needle. He could barely make out what the needle's contents were, but vaguely recognize the writings on it as a pain suppressant and nodded his affirmation for his fellow biotic to stick it into him. A few seconds later he heard the hiss and depression of the needle into his neck then finally the sweet, sweet, bliss of his migraine instantly going away and sighed a little.

"Looked a little peaky there sir," the same voice spoke up and he finally trusted his equilibrium enough to open his eyes to see Lieutenant Delphiki standing in front of him, holding the needle.

"Thanks," he rubbed his neck as he surveyed the area. Shaw was helping Garrus to the ground before the other J-Squad team member moved to check over the turian's wounds. The turian himself was blinking quite owlishly, his hands flailing a little before he realized that he had a huge gash across his armor and looked a little surprised to see it there. He saw Siona approach carefully, but true to form, Revak Vakarian stood back, arms crossed across his chest, the most severe frown, if one could call it that, on his face.

A little bit away from them, Javik was gently placing the dead biotic's body on the ground and Kaidan grimaced a little. He knew the biotic, Yamaguchi was her name and she was one of the greenest in the division. She had been exceptionally gifted and Kaidan knew that Shaw had considered sending the young woman to Grissom Academy before having her back on the squad, but the Reaper attack had probably stopped all transfers.

"Shit, Yamaguchi," Delphiki was also looking in the same direction, "and I was also going to put in a good word for her with Kahlee too." She shook her head before turning back to him and extended her hand to which he shook. Lieutenant Delphiki looked a little worst for wear and was missing part of her shoulder plate and a shin guard on her armor.

"Delphiki," he greeted, "good to see that you're still in one piece."

"And you as well sir," Petra Delphiki light skin belied her Grecian origins, though she did have what others called a classical beauty about her. Still, while some thought she rose up in the ranks of the military because of her looks, he knew that it was not the case. She, like many others, had a special way of attracting leadership and attention, which was why he knew that Shaw had sent her for one last sweep. Delphiki was the division's best scout, quick and nimble on her feet and had learned the asari's technique of flash-stepping, using her biotics to seemingly teleport out of harm's way by inches. It was similar to Shepard's charging abilities, but was only used for quick sprints, not an all out attack. Kaidan supposed that if Delphiki really put her mind to it, she would eventually learn how to _charge_ like Shepard.

"I'm surprised that Anderson sent you," the Lieutenant looked a little nervous and Kaidan frowned.

"Excuse me?"

"My transmission to Shaw regarding the package specifically said who it was," Delphiki now looked confused before turning to see Shaw approaching them, "Commander, didn't you tell the Admiral who had survived the intel team and needed to be picked up?"

"No," Shaw raised an eyebrow, "your transmission was pretty garbled Lieutenant, but we did manage to pick out that someone survived so I raised Admiral Hackett regarding Anderson's plans. Sorry, Petra, but Anderson is MIA right now."

"Oh," Petra looked a little saddened and Kaidan understood why. When he had been tasked to put together his division, he had learned that Delphiki had been one of Anderson's protégés, a young student who had graduated from Grissom Academy and had been recommended by Kahlee Sanders to Anderson himself.

"So there's only one survivor?" Kaidan brought the discussion back as Delphiki shook herself out of her funk and nodded.

"Yeah, uh, listen Major, there's something you should know-"

"Lieutenant! I need more tranquilizers!" one of the medics of C-Squad suddenly shouted from a corner of the supermarket and Kaidan saw him gesture frantically towards the others for any tranquilizer. A thrashing arm was held down by another soldier who had hurried from his post, an empty missile launcher in his hands to help the medic. Another woman, barely a teenager, _civilian_ even, was holding yet another empty missile launcher had rushed to help too.

"What the hell is going on?" the concern gave way to irritation before he pushed past Delphiki, Shaw trailing behind him, equally concerned, and approached the medic who had gotten a tranquilizer from Vega who had tossed it from his own medical pack before injecting it into the flailing arm.

As the medic gently lowered the arm and the others who had jumped in to help slowly rose up from what was clearly a thrashing man Kaidan got his first good look at the last member of the intel unit that had been sent in and presumed lost. He froze in his tracks as he recognized the lined face, black hair peppered with grey and white streaks. His features were more Asiatic than his own, his own coloration and features a blend of his father and mother's mix heritages, but there was no doubt who was lying on the ground before him.

"…Dad…" the words fell unbidden from Kaidan's lips as he stared at his father lying on a billet, eyes glassy from the recent tranquilizer shot, but otherwise was wide awake. Of all the people who had been sent in and whom he was ordered to rescue, he had never expected to rescue his own father, Kenji Alenko.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes:<strong>

Sorry for the delay. I'm writing this story as well as my _Assassin's Creed _one at the same time, so there will be slow updates for this one. Short chapter since the next one is definitely going to be a long one. Song title is from Two Steps From Hell's newest album "Archangel".


	9. Chapter 8: Am I Not Human?

Mass Effect 3: Leaving Earth

By: Shadow Chaser

**Disclaimer:**

Mass Effect does not belong to me; it belongs to Bioware, EA, Casey Hudson, and its writers. Commander Shepard, however, sort of belongs to me – after all, I created her and personalized her (at least I wish I can claim to own her, it's all Bioware's writing so I sort of claim her).

**Story:**

* * *

><p><em>Chapter 8 – Am I Not Human?<em>

Tali was right, even if it was white noise to her ears, it was still reassuring and familiar and much better than silence. It was also the first thing that she was aware of before the cool sensation of air tickled the bare skin of her forearms and her face. The next one was that of a fuzzy feeling before Shepard slowly opened her eyes, blinking several times before the familiar ceiling of the _Normandy's_ med bay filled her vision. What was she doing in the med bay? The last thing she remembered was an incredible white-hot pain, explosions-

_The fleet!_ _The Catalyst! It was a trap!_

Shepard shot up from the bed so fast that her world went white with sharp shooting pain before a firm hand gripped her shoulder as she nearly collapsed. She grasped at the shoulder with her other hands, feeling a sense of rawness in her arms and fingertips as she shut her eyes close, breathing heavily for a few minutes before the pain slowly died away. When she was sure she had her bearings, she opened her eyes again, unclenching teeth that she did not know she had grounded together.

"Whoa, easy there Shepard," the familiar lilting accented voice that sounded just a tad bit _too_ perfect made Shepard turn her head to stare up at Miranda Lawson who was still holding her arm to steady her.

"Miranda?"

The woman smiled, a hesitant yet welcomed sight before letting her arm go and took a step back to allow her some space, "You had us worried there Shepard."

"Again?" Shepard felt utterly exhausted and wanted nothing more than to go back to sleep, but her deep seeded desire to want to know how the hell she had ended up on the _Normandy_ overrode her body's protests. "I need to escape from another space station?"

This time the smile on Miranda's face grew wider and she laughed a little, "No. Not this time. You're on the _Normandy_."

"The ceiling seems familiar," Shepard looked around her as she surveyed her surroundings. She was not hooked up to any monitors, nor had any IVs in her, which meant either she had been intentionally kept under for a long time, or she was in better shape than she had thought when her world had turned into a white-hot pain after she had triggered the Citadel's self-destruction sequence. A quick glance at her hands told a different story as her skin looked patchy and with slightly different colorations. Skin grafts then…

"You were pretty burned when Joker picked you up after the Citadel self-destructed. We were able to clone some new skin grafts for you, but like your implants, they will take time to adjust to your system-"

Shepard instantly knew something was wrong as Miranda rattled off on her skin and had a feeling that perhaps not everything was all right. "Miranda…"

"-you'll also find that you have some new skin under where your armor melted and fused to your body. The fibrous weave was a bit tricky-"

"Miranda…"

"-to dislodge while you were in the operating theatre-"

"Miranda!"

"Y-Yes Shepard?"

"Did…I…" Shepard hesitated for a second as she replayed the events in her mind before looking up at the perfect woman, "I died…?"

Miranda was silent for a full minute before she crossed her arms and leaned against the bed next to her before nodding. "Yes. You died. Again."

Shepard blew out a quiet sigh as she looked back down at her hands. They were perfectly reconstructed and the only sign that she had of injuries previous was just a skin discoloration. Even her nails had grown back and she knew she had a few of them ripped out when she had been transported up to the Citadel from the second Conduit. Such was the miracle of her implants and Cerberus technology as they had rebuilt her nearly a year ago. The funny thing was that, she realized that the last thing before waking up was that she had ordered the fleets to move away and the Citadel blew up. That was all.

The existentialism there would have made any person with an ounce of religious belief in their body despair at that thought – that there was nothing beyond death.

"I died…"

"Clinically dead for about eight hours," Miranda corrected, "before that, you were probably kept alive in an artificial way for the last twenty-four before we were able to operate on you."

She blinked, confused before Miranda pursed her lips and unfolded her arms, "You were held in some kind of stasis field to which we could not get any readings on except the fact that it registered your life signs as deceased. The problem with that was that we literally saw your chest rise and fall as if you were breathing at regular intervals which made me think it was artificially keeping you alive. That was confirmed when the stasis field suddenly released you about ten hours ago and Dr. Chakwas immediately sprang into action due to a cursory scan of your injuries."

"I remember…" Shepard furrowed her brow for a minute as she tried to piece together what had happened to her and remembered getting a gut shot courtesy of the Illusive Man and stared down at her abdomen, the clean medical gown covering her wound. "Gut shot…"

"Yes," the other woman nodded, "that was one of our concerns. The bullet looked like it was shot after the massive amount of radiation poisoning you received running to the Conduit."

"Illusive Man," she grumbled before hearing a slight shift in Miranda's feet and looked up to see her with a slightly shocked expression on her face. "What…?"

"I thought he was at Cronos Station…?"

"No, that was Kai Leng," Shepard had forgotten that Miranda had not been on the _Normandy_ since she dropped her and her sister Oriana off at a small outpost where a transport was waiting for them after leaving Horizon. A small smile appeared on her lips as she remembered gutting the bastard in the side. "Got the bastard though…got him good." Thane would be proud, she supposed, looking down from Beyond the Sea- oh wait…there was nothing-

Shepard pushed the despairing thought away as she mentally shook her head. Thane would be proud, that was all there was to it.

A small bark of laughter from Miranda brought her out of her thoughts to see her chuckling a little, "I'm glad that he got what he deserved." Her laughter died as she sobered a little, "But you said the Illusive Man…?"

"He must have helped the Reapers take over the Citadel; it's the only way since one man could easily slip in amongst thousands of refugees. It would certainly explain how the Reapers were able to transport the thing so fast to Earth while we were occupied with Cronos Station."

"Is he…?"

"He's dead," Shepard had long had a hypothesis that Oriana was only captured by her father due to the Illusive Man revealing where she had been secreted away. She had also been surprised that the smarmy bastard had not hung that over Miranda's head in an effort to blackmail her into working for him again after she had essentially told him off before the Collector Base's destruction. But judging by Miranda's hesitant expression, she supposed that the Illusive Man did indeed tried to blackmail Miranda, but instead had not realized her resolve to get Oriana away from everything and what lengths she would go to do so.

"Good," Miranda looked relieved.

"He shot himself," Shepard shrugged, feeling the pull and sharp pain of her wounds, the slight itching feeling of her skin grafts.

"…Really?"

"He was…indoctrinated," Shepard could not get the haunting image of the Illusive Man's cold, mechanical blue eyes staring back at her; how alive they were instead of just machine. His despair reminded him so much of Saren and how he had come to the realization of just how far he had gone.

Miranda opened her mouth to say something, but closed it after nothing came out. Shepard supposed that the perfect woman was about to make a crack about how they already knew the Illusive Man was indoctrinated, but perhaps realized that she had been talking about a slightly different indoctrination. They sat in silence for the next few minutes before Shepard became aware of several distant thumps and a minor tremor that accompanied said thumps.

"Miranda, where…are we?" she would have thought the _Normandy_ would be ground-side, especially since she was in the medical bay. If not, she should have been shipped off to a medical facility, perhaps Huerta Memorial – oh that was right, the hospital did not exist anymore because she blew up the Citadel. Shepard sighed; she knew she would eventually have to answer to Admiral Hackett regarding her actions. Maybe the Admiral would be as forgiving as destroying the batarian relay and killing the colonists, but she had a nasty feeling that he would not forgive this one. Then again, though she had tried to at least give the colonists a chance to escape, she secretly admitted not to losing any sleep over that – not after Mindoir, not after what she had seen of batarian slavers.

"Admiral Hackett ordered the _Normandy_ to Chicago to pick up an important piece of intel that supposedly could help the scientists groundside reverse the indoctrination process and perhaps cure those who were turned into husks."

"Chicago?"

"Major Alenko is leading a ground op to pick up the package," EDI's gentle voice suddenly broke through, "Jeff is currently awaiting orders to do a hot-zone pick up. We have civilians to whom the Major's biotic division was able to save. Dr. Chakwas is down in the hanger bay checking on their conditions."

"J…squad?" she vaguely remembered Kaidan's search for any surviving members of his biotic division.

"Correct, Commander," EDI sounded pleased; "I was able to widened the search parameters that the Major gave me and discovered J-Squad in Chicago. It seems that it was not only J-Squad that was there, but most of his former division as well. Though many of them have either died or have scattered to escort civilians away from the city before Admiral Anderson was about to order a carpet bombing of the city."

"Carpet bombing?" Shepard felt a little confused.

"Chicago was all but considered lost before we launched our assault on London. The decision had been made to either hit Chicago or London as the Reaper forces were concentrated heavily in both cities. It was the intel of a possible second Conduit like the one on Ilos that made it so that our forces attacked London."

"Oh," Shepard looked down for a moment. It was a numbers game that had been played between Admiral Hackett and Anderson. Another tremor shook the ship before Shepard felt her stomach flip flop as the internal compensators flickered a bit. She frowned, staring up at the ceiling, "EDI-"

"Standby Commander, the Hades Cannons are giving us problems-" there was the briefest pause before EDI's voice came back, "Commander there's also a situation going on in the hanger bay."

"What situation," Shepard immediately hopped out of bed and nearly fell to the ground as her knees buckled from being unused for so long and she felt so weak. It was only Miranda's fast reflexes that saved her from collapsing onto the ground in an undignified heap before she shook her head.

"Shepard you should-"

"What situation," she demanded, propping herself up next to her bed and glaring at the other woman to shut up. When EDI did not immediately answer, she thought she felt a disapproving _frown_ of all things from the A.I. even though her body was no where nearby. "EDI…"

"Commander-"

"EDI, I'm ordering you to tell me," she glared up at the ceiling, "I've been in worst situations. Shooting mechs while trying to escape a space station about to self-destruct when I've just been revived is probably no worst than what's going on."

"Yes ma'am," the A.I. sounded resigned, but her next words were utterly professional, "It seems like there is a hostage situation down in the hanger bay. Five of the refugees that Commander Shaw and his team had been taking care of seem to be under the thralls of indoctrination."

"Show me," Shepard made to bring up her omnitool as she lifted her right arm, but nothing appeared.

"We had to take out your omnitool implant when we had you in surgery," Miranda said before bringing up her omnitool, "EDI, route it to mine."

"Yes ma'am," the A.I. complied and Shepard leaned forward a little, while still keeping her grip tight on the bed in case she fell over again, as the two of them watched the security monitor feed that EDI had patched through.

A frown appeared on Shepard's face as she stared at feed. It was a little grainy, but clear enough for her to recognize the forms of both Cortez and Tali on opposite sides of the room, guns trained on the indoctrinated civilians. Two soldiers whom she did not recognize were lying on the ground, unmoving, as the indoctrinated civilians held five others hostage. The guns pointed at the heads of those held hostage were one of professionalism and most definitely soldier-like.

One of the indoctrinated people was shouting something as two other soldiers stepped away, hands held away from their bodies. Probably the leader. She knew the security footages had no sound, but she wished there was a clearer image so she could see who had given that order.

"I have scrambled a team of marines including Privates Westmoreland and Campbell from the war room guard duty to assist the others in the hanger bay, but it seems the indoctrinated civilians know that help may come from the elevators and have placed charges next to the doors to open if they come through."

"That's…professional," Miranda looked shocked and Shepard nodded in agreement.

"EDI can you give me a more definitive visual on their leader?"

"I can try," they watched as the A.I. manipulated the security camera and zoomed in towards the one gesturing and talking before trying to enhance the image. As soon as the image was enhanced, Shepard felt her stomach drop. She knew the leader…and knew how far he had fallen.

"Shit," the curse fell from her lips as she shook her head, "Eddie…"

"You know him?" Miranda glanced sideways.

"…Yeah," she replied before look around, an idea forming.

"Shepard who is he?"

She ignored Miranda's question as she got up, staggering a little from the sudden dizziness and weakness in her limbs before glaring sideways as the woman made to help her.

"Shepard-"

"EDI, are the emergency pathways being monitored?" she asked as she gingerly made her way to the A.I. core and palmed the door opened. Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw bits and pieces of her own reflection against the shaded glass windows of the medical bay. Her face was heavily scarred, a few deep red craggy lines that was similar to how she had originally woken up when she had been revived with the Lazarus Project. Shepard looked away, a grimace on her lips. Underneath it all, she was still cybernetic and still more machine than human…and though she would never voice it to anyone, not even Kaidan; that scared her.

"No, Commander," the A.I. replied as Shepard paused, staring at EDI's crumpled form lying at the alcove in the back of the A.I. core, "my physical body encountered a strange interference when Jeff tried to rescue you from the debris of the Citadel. I am fine, Shepard."

Shepard blinked, opening her mouth to voice her doubt when EDI's voice returned.

"I appreciate your concern, but it will take me a little more time before I am able to upload myself to the body once more. For now, I will be able to assist you and Ms. Lawson through the emergency shafts."

"Okay," Shepard knew better than to argue with an A.I. and if EDI said she was fine, then she would let it go. She had a feeling that Joker was probably even more worried than she was and supposed that the A.I. did not need two mother hens. Though she did wonder what had happened and why Joker had done something as reckless as trying to rescue her when the Citadel all but exploded.

Biotics were out of the question in dealing with this situation and even if she could, she would not want to risk her implant exploding or anything untoward happening to it. Her mind felt a little fuzzy and disconnected; the same feeling when she had either a horrible head cold or when her implant was rattled around a little too much. She heard Miranda follow after her as she crawled through the shafts, wincing at the way her nearly stitched and healing wounds were pulling. Dr. Chakwas was going to have her head at this rate…

"Left, Shepard," Miranda directed quietly behind her as she turned down another corridor, holding up a hand to shield a bright light from the inner workings of the Normandy. She could feel the deep vibrations that pulsed through the ships, could literally feel how alive the ship was before taking a right at Miranda's direction.

"Shepard," the woman whispered as she climbed down another ladder, "do you know who their leader is?"

"Yeah," Shepard replied back, "I'm surprised that you don't know."

"Should I?"

"Cerberus did experiment on him for several years after setting thresher maws upon his team," when she had first been revived and talked to the Illusive Man, she had wanted to bring up Akuze and the unethical experiments he had conducted on her team. But that had been put on hold since Freedom's Progress and afterwards, she never really got the opportunity to ask. Even the letter she had received had been put into the back of her mind, the more pressing concern in stopping the Collectors at the forefront. In fact, she had shoved every single personal correspondence into a 'to-read' later pile after receiving Kaidan's letter, a part of her not wanting to read how others thought she had betrayed them and so forth.

She heard the briefest of pauses from Miranda as they crawled further downward. The vibrations were getting stronger which meant that they were getting closer to the hanger bay deck. "Oh…"

"I mean to ask about Akuze," Shepard started a little conversationally, "but I guess, it's probably a moot point by now. I mean, with the Illusive Man dead and Cerberus all but destroyed."

"I'm sorry," Miranda sounded subdued, "if that will help…"

"Not your fault," Shepard tried to keep the bitterness out of her voice, but was not sure if she succeeded or not.

"You are directly above a grating behind several containers. It is the only place where no one would be able to spot you, Shepard," EDI's voice whispered from Miranda's omnitool and Shepard stopped, looking up to see the slightly familiar hues of the hanger bay and the wafting silvery metallic taste and smell of eezo. She wasn't too sure if that was the most accurate description of element zero, but at least to her, it tasted…silvery and had a metallic feel to it. Blood tasted like copper, but eezo, tasted a little more refined.

She gently reached up and lifted the grating away before pulling herself out and turned to help Miranda up before placing the grating back where it was. As soon as that was done, she crawled forward and peered out from in between two crates, surveying the situation.

"Where is Shepard? Huh? Where's that bitch?" the leader shouted, waving his pistol haphazardly around while twisting and turning his body with his hostage held close so that those who had guns trained on him could not do anything. She saw a couple of soldiers back away a little, but could literally feel the tremor of biotics amongst them and was puzzled.

"Those are members of Major Alenko's biotic division. They had been sent to escort the civilians onto the ship after the Major took the others to search for the package," EDI whispered behind her.

"Oh," Shepard nodded absently as she saw who the leader's hostage was. Shit…that could be a problem. Dr. Chakwas had the most utterly still expression on her face, but grimaced as she was occasionally wrenched this way and that by the indoctrinated leader. Shepard knew that Chakwas' formal military rank was that of a Major, which meant she at least had some combat training, but when she had last used it was beyond her. At least she knew not to struggle or give into the fear of a gun pointed at her head, ready to end her life.

"This ship is a _lie_!" the man screamed again, "nothing but a fucking trap! The Reapers will win if this ship is allowed to continue to fly! You have to destroy it! All of you have to die with it!"

"Hey man, I'm sure some of the people here served on the first _Normandy_-"

"They're all Cerberus! Can't you see that? Can't you _understand_? You're all indoctrinated and you're all Cerberus! Nothing is real!" he cut Cortez off ruthlessly before Shepard saw the Kodiak pilot back away a few steps, hand held away from his body placatingly.

"You think you can just slap some blue-colored paint on this thing and call it Alliance? It'll forever be Cerberus all because of that bitch-"

"Plan A," Shepard tuned out the man's rantings and turned to Miranda, "was to snipe him, but he's got a man on the weapons stations."

"So what's Plan B?" Miranda whispered back.

"I go out there-"

"Shepard!"

"-and negotiate with Toombs," Shepard continued before noticing Miranda start a bit. "What?"

"Toombs? As in Corporal Edward Toombs?" the woman looked surprised.

"Yeah, didn't I tell you?"

"No…" the other woman replied, "Shepard, he was-"

"Yeah, part of my unit in Akuze. I thought I had been the only survivor, but we found Toombs being held at a facility about three years ago. I got him some help, thought he was at least trying to make a recovery, but he sent me a message a while back saying that he had his own merc band; wait, didn't you see that message?"

"Yes, but I didn't want to mention it," Shepard knew that Miranda always screened all of her messages and had been a little annoyed, even angry that the ex-Cerberus woman had done so without her permission, but eventually decided that at that point, she did not care what messages she screened or even passed on to the Illusive Man. Let him think what he wanted back then, she had been brought back to life to do one thing – stop the Collectors by any means necessary.

"Oh, well-"

"The Illusive Man had forbidden me to talk about Akuze or anything related to that either," Miranda looked guilty; "I'm sorry Shepard. Back then, he knew that mentioning anything about Akuze might have made you cut ties with Cerberus-"

"I eventually did," Shepard shrugged before waving her apology away, "Miranda, you don't ever need to apologize about anything you did in Cerberus. I've accepted your apology a long time ago. What's done is done and there's no looking back at past regrets."

The woman smiled bracingly before gestured with a chin towards Toombs who was still ranting and waving his arms around, "So what's Plan B?"

"Go out there, negotiate, and see if Toombs is willing to listen to me," Shepard did not like Plan B as much as she liked Plan A. Plan A at least she had a gun; Plan B, she had nothing. Her biotics were useless at this point and she did not have a gun.

"That doesn't sound like a plan," Miranda also seemed to notice her discomfort but Shepard smiled a little crookedly.

"If things go south, I probably will need backup. I need you to signal Cortez, Tali, and especially the biotic soldiers to act quickly. Slam, pull, do anything that needs to be done to disarm the others, but don't harm them. EDI says that they're indoctrinated so maybe they could be cured."

"What about you?"

"I still know hand-to-hand combat-"

"That's not going to do a lot of good against a bullet-"

"Maybe you'll revive me again?" Shepard forced a soft laugh from her lips as Miranda frowned.

"That's not funny Shepard," the woman hissed.

"Meow?"

"That's not funny either," this time she crossed her arms across her chest, "you shouldn't joke about that." When they had reached Illium to search for Samara and Thane, Shepard had been surprised to see a stray cat of all things at the Dantius Towers. She would have thought that the animal would not have survived outside of Earth, but it had proven resilient as ever. That had started a joke amongst her and Miranda, whom she learned, had a pet cat growing up, that she was similar to a cat with the fabled 'nine lives'. The joke had only gotten even funnier after the destruction of the Collector Base and they had limped to Illium to do some emergency repairs and found the cat again, this time wandering around the spaceport.

Shepard blew out a quick sigh before craning her neck back and forth, hearing a tiny crack of relief before nodding solemnly to Miranda who nodded back and crawled away from her. She shimmied across the length of the 2nd Kodiak, feeling slight warmth near its engines that told her Cortez had recently taken the fixed shuttle out and had finally repaired it. She was glad that the pilot had survived and not dwelling on what could have been. Cortez was a good man and deserved a chance at happiness and living the life in the memory of his husband.

Straightening herself, she stood up, the tail end of the Kodiak covering her before squaring her shoulders. It was now or never…and she hoped that perhaps Toombs would be able to be reasoned with before he was completely consumed by indoctrination. She took a deep breath before stepping out, eyes straight at Toombs, ignoring how all of the guns had pointed to her at her sudden arrival.

"There she is…the cybernetic bitch Shepard," Toombs growled out, gun held steady in his arms as he pointed it at her face.

Shepard tilted her head a little and let a ruthless smile appear on her face, one she reserved for suicidal missions. "Hello Toombs," she greeted.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes:<strong>

Again, I am not going to use specifics (like hair, skin, eyes) to describe my Shepard. The only things that are important are her background and morality. I believe in making you, the readers, imagine your own Shepards with similar backgrounds to fit into this story. The only descriptor I had was just her eyes, but even that was in passing. Hope you like it so far!


	10. Chapter 9: Worthy of Survival

Mass Effect 3: Leaving Earth

By: Shadow Chaser

**Disclaimer:**

_Mass Effect_ does not belong to me; it belongs to Bioware, EA, Casey Hudson, and its writers. Commander Shepard, however, sort of belongs to me – after all, I created her and personalized her (at least I wish I can claim to own her, it's all Bioware's writing so I sort of claim her).

**Story:**

* * *

><p><em>Chapter 9 – Worthy of Survival<em>

"Hello Toombs," Shepard greeted, the smile frozen on her face. She had stared down far worst and the fact that Toombs did not instantly shoot her the moment she stepped out meant that he was either going to talk or wanted to shoot her at the most dramatic moment…which should have been when she first stepped out. Judging by what she knew about the man when he served under her on Akuze, he came from a theatre background and loved entertaining an audience. Her unit had referred with some affection that he was their unit's clown.

And how far the clown had fallen…

"Shepard," there was no respect in Toombs' voice, unlike their encounter on Ontarom three years ago. Instead, she heard anger, disappointment, and hurt in Toombs' voice.

She acknowledged him with a curt nod, keeping her eyes focused on him. However, she was peripherally aware of what was happening around her – how the marines that had been stationed aboard the _Normandy_ looked a little surprised to see her up and about and probably with massive scars all over her face exposing some of her inner…circuitry for the lack of a better word. However, they were professionals as they maintained their cool and some moved a little, but not too much to startle the other four who had guns trained on them.

The biotics that had been disarmed instead, stared at her with open shock, perhaps not used to seeing a living legend, but also perhaps of her scars. She was certainly not what they had expected. And she was fully aware that she was still dressed in hospital clothing, even though it was a far cry from the hospital gowns of olden days, it was still a thin fabric material that hung a bit loosely on her already wiry frame.

"They said you were dead," now that she was standing in front of him, she saw the hint of doubt in his eyes, even though they were darkened in anger.

"So they say," she kept her reply neutral as she held her hands open and slightly away from her body.

"You're not the real Shepard," Toombs suddenly cocked the gun in front of her face, inching it closer, but she merely stared at it. Inwardly, she was terrified that all it took was one bullet to put her down again. She had no doubt that Miranda would jump into action if she did die and perhaps even revive her again, but at the same time, realistically staring down the barrel of a gun wasn't pleasant. "And if I put a bullet in you, what's stopping Cerberus from reviving you again? You're nothing but just a V.I. who thinks she's Commander Shepard."

"Then what's stopping you?" she gambled upon the slight bit of fear that was in Toombs' eyes and took a small step forward, the gun now solidly held against her head. A quick glance at the others stopped them from doing anything else. "You think I'm not real, then shoot me and let the others go. You're after me, right? You think that I'm an abomination and that I don't deserve to live, right? Then shoot me."

Her former teammate suddenly smiled and stepped back, but still kept the gun leveled at her head. "No, no, no," he laughed, a bitter-insane tinged laugh, "you think that I'm that generous? That I'm willing to just shoot you and let the others go so that they can revive you? That's...that's not you Shepard. You're definitely not the Shepard I served with."

"Then tell me who was the Shepard you served with?" she asked, watching his gun carefully as he waved it around before returning it back to her head.

Toombs laughed again, "You think- You think I'm going to tell you about Shepard? So that what, you can impersonate her? Be that Cerberus mole I fucking know you are? You're nothing but an android! I mean, come on! Look at yourself!"

She merely stared at him, refusing to rise to the bait and instead watched as he twitched a sign that he had expected her to answer. But when presented with no answer to his angry question, he had to think of something else. "You're nothing but a copy, of grown flesh and cybernetics. Look at you, nothing but a machine. Bits and pieces of copper wiring that shouldn't even exist. They say that artificial intelligence is illegal in Citadel space, but you should be illegal. You should be six-feet under the ground where there's nothing else for you to breathe in except the bugs and worms that are eating your desiccated body."

The vivid imagery that he presented curled some of the mouths of her fellow crewman and more than one twitched, trying to do something to prevent him from slandering her further, but they were professionally restrained by the four others standing above them. Even the biotics had slight looks of disgust and Shepard did not blame them. However, she managed to keep her face neutral, blank, unaffected by the insults and descriptive language of where her body should technically be.

"See," Toombs sudden laughed, "nothing but a robot."

Shepard frowned as she realized that by keeping her cool she had fallen into Toombs' trap. But a part of her reasoned that if she had lost her cool then it would only serve as ammunition to whatever Toombs was ranting and formulating in his head. Damned if she did, damned if she didn't; she thought with some frustration.

"You really think that insulting me, insulting that I should be six-feet under is really going to cut it?" she asked quietly, "Toombs, you know me better than to make petty threats like that."

"You're right," Toombs hefted the gun again; "I do know the _real_ Shepard and you're not her."

"Then why aren't you shooting me dead yet?" Shepard could feel a slight bit of frustration and anger mounting, "What's making you hesitate Toombs? Afraid that somewhere deep down, I may be the _real_ Shepard? That I am who I say I am?"

"When, Shepard, _when _I shoot you, I'm gonna shoot you dead. No hope of revival, nothing!"

"And then what? Walk out of here?" Shepard pressed her voice nearly a hiss of anger as she stared at Toombs. She could barely keep a lid on her anger and knew that it was a combination of waking up to something like this, her inability to stop others from reviving her, and even the dark fact that she had destroyed the Citadel. The fear, anger, all of it, knowing that nothing was beyond the darkness of death, it scared her and Toombs was ripping that wound wide open to let it bleed all over the place.

But she also knew that she had to save the crew; save Chakwas. If there was anyone that needed to die, it would be her. After all, Miranda would probably revive her nice and easy, a small voice muttered almost bitterly. But did she want to die? Was she that much of a death seeker? Shepard inwardly shook her head as she shoved the annoying thought to the side. It was something she could dwell on later, after Toombs and his men were dealt with. She was tired, cold, and knew that the adrenaline she had when she crawled her way out of the med bay was dying away as she stood in front of Toombs. She could feel each shudder and vibration of the _Normandy _and hoped that whatever mission Kaidan was on and with Joker piloting, it would be completed soon.

But she also knew she could not hold out hope of activating the ramp of the ship. Toombs would definitely not allow it which meant each delay potentially was a death sentence to whomever Kaidan had taken along with him. Judging by the fact that it was only Tali and Cortez on the ship, with EDI incapacitated, it meant that Liara, Garrus, and the others were groundside with Kaidan. She knew that the possibility of some of them perhaps staying in London was slim, since her crew was almost like family and thus she knew that no one would stay behind when they could help another member of the crew with any mission. The fact that they had even dragged her unconscious self meant that Kaidan was willing to forgo normal procedures and perhaps even tell Admiral Hackett that she was coming no matter the circumstances.

"No," Toombs smiled again, a half-deranged smile and shook his head, "even I'm not that stupid. No. I'm going to probably die..."

"Hey Toombs-"

"Shut the fuck up, Brennan," Toombs suddenly turned on one of his men who had Chakwas in his grip, gun still pointed at her head. "I told you no talking!"

"Yeah but-"

"You want to die right now? Huh?" Shepard saw Toombs move his gun away from her and every instinct screamed at her to move and disarm him, but she managed to violently suppress that instinct and even glared at Cortez and one of the other biotics who had also twitched to the sudden movement.

The man, Brennan, shook his head before the gun moved back to point at Shepard. She calmly stared at Toombs who had a hesitating grin on his face now as he realized that she had not even moved an inch while the gun had been off of her.

"You...didn't disarm me?"

Shepard shrugged, "Couldn't risk the good doctor here."

"Thank-"

"Shh!" Brennan cut Chakwas' reply off by tightening his arm against her throat.

"...Really..." Toombs stared at her, an eyebrow raised up in surprise, "the Shepard I remember would have done some weird-assed biotics, or something to stop a situation like that when the gun was off of her."

"The Shepard you knew was also foolhardy, reckless, and got her team killed by a Thresher Maw that day," she replied quietly, the memories of that horrific day flashing before her eyes. She had been an N5 then, leading her squad to rescue civilians from a Cerberus facility on the other side of Akuze before receiving a distress call from a downed civilian ship. She had radioed her commanding officer and he had approved of the rescue mission after they had blown up the Cerberus facility.

She could still hear the screams of her team as she tried desperately to distract the Thresher Maw with her shotgun and biotic charges. It was the first time that she had used her unique ability to literally teleport like a miniature mass effect relay around the battlefield. She had only tried teleporting once before and even then it was in a controlled setting and had left her very hungry afterwards. In light of what happened in Akuze, she had refused to use her unique ability for the longest time. It was only when Cerberus revived her and gave her new implants along with trying to save Garrus' ass from the combined forces of Omega's gangs that she started to use that ability again.

The rest of her squad had tried to fan out after the initial attack, but some had been caught by the liquefaction of the ground by the Thresher Maw's acid, while others had fallen due to the ground quakes and subsequently eaten. It was almost twenty minutes of non-stop teleportation that she had finally collapsed to the ground, near the bodies of her men that had not been eaten, expecting to die when the alien creature withdrew into the ground one last time.

To her surprise, she had woken up at an alliance facility and discovered that she had been out cold for a week due to malnutrition and had nearly died from a biotic overload. The facility's commanding officer had reported that she was the only one to have survived Akuze and even then her health had been very touch and go. Her reward was not a demotion or discharge from either the N-program or the Systems Alliance, but rather a promotion to an N6.

It had taken her at least a year to accept the N6 promotion without feeling utterly disgusted and even then, she had hidden that disgust deep inside of her. Her mind had rationalized her track up the N-program as a way to atone for getting her team killed on Akuze.

Until the day she discovered that Cerberus had been holding Eddie Toombs and had experimented on him.

"And she left her team behind," Toombs finished quietly.

"Yes, she did," Shepard agreed, her anger deflating a little, "her promise not to leave anyone behind was broken."

"She left her team behind once more," the initial crazed anger that was in Toombs' voice was gone as he seemingly wilted in front of her. However, she dared not move, noting the steadiness of the gun held in the man's hand that was still pointed at her chest.

"She thought..." Shepard hesitated; she had never really told anyone and had even omitted it from her report to Admiral Hackett back then, but before Toombs had been taken away by the Alliance from Ontarom, he had asked her if he could join her team. She had not guaranteed any promises, but had at least promise to consider it. And it seemed that Toombs had taken her consideration as a 'yes'. "She thought that you needed to rest. She knew that she abandoned her friend for six years, left him behind in the hands of the enemy. I thought that if I could go back to that time, to realize what had been done, that it was all a trap..."

"It was six years of hell," Toombs said quietly, his teeth set on edge, "and you promised."

"I'm sorry," Shepard knew her words were empty and the sarcastic snort from Toombs confirmed it, "I can't say anything else."

"Because you're not her!"

"_Then shoot_!" she ordered, "shoot me and be done with this. Shoot me and let the others go!"

"So they can kill me?"

"So they can continue the fight against the Reapers you idiot!" she could not believe that Toombs was so blinded by revenge and betrayal that he had forgotten about the Reapers, "they're still out there!" She shook her head, "So you can fight the Reapers and get your ass back on the front lines where you want to be!"

"I...I don't-"

Shepard watched as Toombs hesitated, blinking his eyes rapidly as the conflicts within him came ahead, clashing against one another. "I'm keeping my promise right now Toombs. Shoot me and you can go back to the front lines, hell even join the crew if you want, I don't care, but you have to know that the real enemies are the Reapers. You want to rejoin me? Then kill me and then go kill the Reapers. Stop holding your fellow future crew members hostage and focus on the enemy. Right? Remember what I said? Support-"

"-your teammates as they are your family. Focus on the enemy and give them hell."

"'Ooorah," Shepard echoed quietly, "Motto of the 51st platoon."

"...Yeah," for the first time, she was treated to the sight of a slight hesitant sad smile on Toombs' face, "Carver called us the Warbirds. I called him the Plucked Chicken."

The corner of her lips twitched up in a smile at that memory. Toombs was always assigning nicknames to the rest of the platoon and squad members. As was befitting of being their commanding officer, she was nicknamed Prairie Hawk, an allusion to her farming background and homeworld of Mindoir, while Toombs himself was, "Albatross."

"You remembered," the smile grew a little and Shepard saw his pistol lower just a little, but still did not move, acutely aware of what was happening around her. The crew was watching their exchange with some morbid fascination and she knew that if she survived this, then rumors were bound to fly around the ship, both of her reclusive and literally blacked-out background, and also of what was happening between her and Toombs.

"I followed you," Toombs' voice suddenly cracked, "I followed you and tried to follow you into hell, but..."

Shepard smiled sadly, "Eddie, where I went...no one had been expected to make it back. Hell...I did not expect to come back. Cerberus-"

"Fucking rebuilt you," the hurt and anguish was suddenly and rather violently replaced by a flash of anger as the gun rose once more, "fucking turned you into a robot, cyborg, something that's _not human._"

"You're probably right," Shepard agreed, absently reaching up and touching one of her many scars on her face. It felt oddly weird to be feeling puckering flesh, a jagged hole, and sharp shooting pain underneath where she knew she probably had pain receptors implanted into her to simulate injury and the like whenever she took accidental fire or had bumped into something. But she had always wondered how much of her was flesh and how much of it was machine. Project Overlord had proven that she was machine enough to be hacked, which had been a surreal and terrifying experience to the point where she had sworn Garrus and Miranda to silence regarding that issue. Kaidan did not even know about what had happened to Overlord and she was only glad that Dr. Archer had not spilled much about it after finding him with the defecting Cerberus scientists on Arrae.

"Did...did you really die? Or was it all a trick? You didn't die right? That's why you joined Cerberus because you were undercover-"

"I died," Shepard stopped Toombs from rambling on, "Collectors ripped the _Normandy_ apart and I died. If you'll forgive me, the details are a bit vague." It was a blatant lie, as she remembered every single excruciating minute of her death, her only salvation was that she was going to not breathe anymore by the time she felt her suit heat up as it entered the upper thin atmosphere of Alchera. Burning up, even the sensation of burning gave her nightmares and it was only because of what had happened when she had made her desperate escape from Batarian slavers on Mindoir.

Toombs only stared at her for a second before shaking his head, "There you go again, lying. You're not the Shepard I knew. She wouldn't- she-" He shook his head some more, gasping a little and it was only then that Shepard instantly knew what was wrong with Eddie Toombs and why he had acted the way he did.

Toombs believed like so many others, that she had not died and rather had faked her death to join Cerberus. While some of the others questioned the value of her joining with a known terrorist organization that had caused so much grief within the Alliance, others suspected that perhaps her views of cooperation with aliens was just a front for perhaps a Terra Firma or even a humanity-first view. And it was not by association that they had made the mistake of assuming that. She knew that her chat with Charles Saracino who ran for a seat on the Terra Firma platform was being watched and recorded by dozens of others, media outlets not included. But she had hoped that they would pick up on her refusal to endorse a candidate like him.

Instead, some had thought that she had humanity-first ties. It was also because of Councilor Udina, who made no bones about his view of putting humanity first and because of his actions on the Citadel that some had perhaps become disillusioned with her; associating her status as the first human Spectre to Udina's rise in power. Even the Council had been wary of her and reinstated her Spectre status as a conditional point to restrict her to the Terminus Systems. No one trusted that she had actually died and came back to life except those that knew her and those that survived the original _Normandy's_ destruction.

She wanted to tell Toombs that contrary to popular belief, she was not a hero, but she also knew that it would turn this tense negotiation south in a heartbeat. But neither could she just dismiss his seemingly heroic-worship of her. She realized that he saw her like many others saw her, a pedestal of paragon action; a person who was able to move the world and make things right. And for Toombs, joining Cerberus was her falling off of that metaphoric pedestal. Joining forces with the devil.

The only course then was a validation of Toombs' fears and the truth. "You're right, you know."

"That you're not Shepard-"

"This ship," she gestured to the hanger bay, aware that Toombs and a couple of the mercs twitched in reaction to her sweeping gesture, "definitely was Cerberus. You're right. Slapping on blue paint doesn't quite call it Alliance, but whatever. That's just the mere details. Tali, there, the quarian, joined me so you can say she also joined Cerberus-"

"Shepard-"

"And the good doctor also definitely joined Cerberus, but the Alliance can't prosecute her because she went through proper channels and took leave while she was with me," she continued, overriding whatever Tali was about to protest.

"Joker," she pointed a finger upwards in the direction of the elevators, "definitely joined Cerberus. Quit right after the first _Normandy's _destruction. Said he couldn't stand the bullshit that the Alliance was doing, non-action, about the Reapers and instead thought it was stupid of them and the Council to assign us to clean up geth forces of all things."

She pointed at two more crew members, "Valdez and Inoue, both are definitely part of Cerberus long before I joined up with them. You can ask them about how it was if you want to." She held up a hand to stop Toombs from interrupting her, "Ask Cortez here, the Kodiak's pilot. He probably can tell you all about how the Alliance ignored Collector attacks attributing it to raiders and the like before Cerberus tried to evacuate everyone from Ferris Fields, but failed. Yeah, I'm sure that would go over well.

"Oh and you can probably also ask Garrus, that turian you remember meeting back on Ontarom," Shepard saw the dip of Toombs' head on his increasingly baffled face, "yeah, asking him when he gets back, how we did it."

"Did...what?" the first sign of curiosity lit up Toombs' face and Shepard knew that she had succeeded in holding his attention, breaking him from his momentary anger and fury.

"How we stole the damn ship from under Cerberus' nose," she allowed the wolfish grin to appear on her face once more, "how we basically said fuck you to the Illusive Man and took his ship, gave the crew a choice, and said 'you know what, the bigger concern is the Reapers.'"

"This is still a Cerberus-"

"Of course it is," Shepard rolled over his protests, "and it'll probably be a Cerberus ship until it goes down. And I may be suspected of being Cerberus and fake, but do you really think I give a damn about that?"

"Then why are you down here? Huh? Come to meet your death-"

"To stop you from making another goddamn mistake!" she suddenly shouted at him, startling him a little as he took a step back, "because you don't need to kill anymore people! If you want to kill something, then either kill me, or focus your fire on the enemy, the Reapers!"

"But-"

"What's past is past, Toombs," Shepard shook her head, "you have to move on. You can't dwell on the past because it will eat you alive if you do. Like it's doing right now!"

Silence greeted her statement and she saw the hesitation, the indecision on Toombs' face. It seemingly stretched to the point when the sudden crackle of the speakers echoed in the near-silent hanger bay everyone jumped a little.

"Uh, sorry Commander, but, I'm getting a marker to approach the LZ and-"

"No," Toombs waved his gun, "you're not putting the ship down to pick up the people down there. They're indoctrinated-"

"They're my crew, my men Toombs," Shepard stated coldly before suddenly turning her back on him and walking towards the weapons bench. She immediately heard the whine of his gun readying itself and heard four others follow suit, but did not look back. Instead, she slowed her step and stared straight at the weapons bench, aware that Cortez, Tali, and several others were trying to see if they could figure out a way to cover her while she had her back turned.

"Toombs, I'm not leaving anyone behind. You can shoot me, or you can allow me to save my team. You can probably call them Cerberus or whatever, but they're still fighting the good fight against the Reapers," she paused for a second, wondering if a bullet was coming her way, but when there was no bloom of pain in the back of her head, nothing to indicate that she was shot, she continued to walk forward and stop in front of the weapons bench.

"Cortez," she turned to the Kodiak pilot who had a pistol trained upon one of the five men.

"M-Ma'am?" Cortez responded a little hesitatingly, obviously confused as to what he should do.

"Where's my rifle?"

"Uh..."

"Don't tell me Harbinger fried it-"

"Oh, um, Garrus has it up at his station. He said he was going to repair it and make some calibrations-"

"And that's Garrus in a nutshell," Shepard smiled a little before reaching out and picking up the Mantis that was on the bench, recognizing it as her own that she had given to Cortez to sell and procure some more money for upgrades to other weapons. The fact that the weapon was still here meant that either the pilot had not had time to sell it or did not even consider selling it. She knew that a well-kept Mantis was hot commodity on the black market, so she wondered why Cortez did not sell it.

"This still in working order?" she asked, peering at it and knowing that guns were still trained upon her.

"Y-Yes ma'am," Cortez replied, "ma'am-"

"Good," she slapped a fresh thermal clip on it and checked the cartridge slab. There was still more than half a block left which meant she had at least several shots. Grabbing a handful of thermal clips she turned around and glared at Toombs and his merc band. "Toombs, if you're going to stand there pointing a gun, point it at the enemy."

"Hey Toombs-"

"Shut up Miller," Shepard watched as Toombs glared at another one of his companions, "and follow the good Commander's orders."

"But-"

"I said shut up!" Toombs suddenly walked over and pistol whipped the man across the face, startling everyone.

"I thought-"

"Brennan, I told you not to speak-"

Shepard took the opportunity and hefted her Mantis, "EDI send the elevator back up with my apologies. Tali, disable the bombs on the elevator so we don't have an accident later. Cortez, I need you and Andrews to help move the civilians to the back of the hanger bay-"

"Hey you-"

She rounded upon Brennan who was still holding Dr. Chakwas hostage thought he had doubts written all over his face and was looking around with some amount of confusion at the sudden movement from everyone. Even the biotics that had been held hostage were tentatively getting up, their captor that had been standing over them confused. "You've got a problem soldier?" she asked in her quiet, frozen tone that Kaidan had once dubbed drill sergeant nasty.

"No ma'am," Brennan's immediate answer confirmed that at least parts of Toombs' merc band were ex-military and prone to following orders when one had the voice to do it.

"Then please let Dr. Chakwas go so she can make sure the other civilians are safe. And then help the others move crates into position," she said quietly before raising her voice, "Joker, hot LZ?"

"Hopefully not too hot. Major Alenko was supposed to have disabled two Hades Cannons, but we'll definitely have a lot of Reaper forces on the ground."

"Let me know when you're starting your final approach," she heard something impact the bulkheads before a slight shudder reverberated through the ship.

"Yes ma'am. And might I add that it's good to see you back in action Commander."

She only grinned in reply before turning to the biotics, immediately identifying their commanding officer, a mere Ensign, "You, what's your name?"

"Ensign Ophelia Hawking ma'am," she saluted her, "E-squad sniper division under the First Special Operations, Biotic Division."

"Related to J-Squad?" Shepard asked, her curiosity momentarily getting the better of her.

"Not quite, but J-Squad's commander, Commander Shaw is our commanding officer while Major Alenko is away. My brother Rick is part of F-Squad's biotic engineer division."

"Ah," half of it went over Shepard's head and she supposed she would have to ask Kaidan about his squad after everything was done, but she pushed the thought to the side, "Ensign, I need you and your men to help move crates around the parts of the hanger bay. Can any of you set up a barrier field?"

"Like what the asari sometimes do? Yeah, I'll have one of my men get to it."

"Good, set it up where the civilians are and assign three members to protect the civilians. I want you to pick a sniper's perch and get a spotter."

"Yes ma'am," the two of them tilted a little as Joker put the _Normandy_ through a tight turn before she hurried off and began to bark orders to the four other biotics that had been getting their weapons, some still wary about the ones who had held them hostage, but Shepard was getting to that as she walked over to Toombs who was helping Cortez move a crate into place.

"Toombs, will your men fight?"

"If they know what's good for them, yes," there was clarity in Toombs' eyes, though still clouded by hatred and anger, but Shepard was glad that she was able to at least temporarily break the hostage situation going on. Her only hope was that Miranda knew to stay out of sight. She was perhaps the most visible of all ex-Cerberus members and if Toombs got one whiff of her...

"I want them to do covering fire. And if I see them deliberately targeting the evacuating soldiers, I will kill them myself-"

"Not if I get to it first," Toombs smiled darkly, "we'll follow your lead Commander."

"And then afterwards," she smiled a little, "we can continue talking, okay?"

"Hah," the man snorted, "for a V.I. who thinks she's Commander Shepard, you sure act like her."

"I'm touched," she replied a little sarcastically, unwilling to show that his comment had cut her deeply.

"Commander, starting final approach," Joker's voice suddenly came over the comm., "brace for incoming fire."

"Lower the ramp!" she moved towards one of the crates positioned just near the edge of the hanger bay doors and settled the butt of her rifle against her shoulder and steadied her breath. She did not know if she was healthy enough to even think of going into combat, but she knew that there was no other choice.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes:<strong>

With the revised ending DLC launching tomorrow, I'll be a bit busy over the next couple of weeks. However, I will continue to write this fic and will not abandon it just because of the DLC. I seriously hope they have the fourth option I put forth in this story – blow up the Citadel and Crucible and fight the Reapers one-on-one.


End file.
